Coinages – Interesting Literature

The Fascinating World of Authorisms: Words Created by Writers

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reads Paul Dickson’s Authorisms: Words Wrought by Writers

All words have to start somewhere, of course. But many of them are of anonymous authorship. The small amount of success I’ve had in getting the word ‘bibliosmia’ into general circulation has demonstrated that, even if a word has a clear origin and originator, this is soon of less consequence than the usefulness of the word itself. Yet some words do have clear origins and clear creators. Sometimes, a famous word was also coined by a famous person. And it’s of little surprise that writers have been especially proficient at coining new words.

Paul Dickson’s Authorisms: Words Wrought by Writers, is the kind of book that was bound to get written eventually, and in a way it’s surprising that it took until 2014 for someone to do so. Dickson offers, if you like, a lexicon with a difference, running the whole gamut of author-coined words and phrases from ‘A man got to do what he got to do’ through to ‘zombification’. There’s also an epilogue and an appendix, which sees Dickson addressing the far-from-simple question of how many words and phrases Shakespeare, often considered the master neologist of the English language, actually coined. He gets the credit for a vast number, but

15 Great New Words for Phenomena That Don’t Yet Have a Name

15 neologisms and coinages to describe as yet unnamed experiences in the modern world

Here at Interesting Literature Towers we love interesting word facts. On Twitter we recently held a competition to coin a new word for something that doesn’t really have an existing word to describe it. (We’ve tried to get bibliosmia into common currency, but it needs a bit more of a push.) Using the hashtag #CoinANewWord, we encouraged our followers and other Twitterers to suggest new words for familiar experiences and feelings, especially those that are peculiar to the modern-day world. Below are some of our favourites. We’ll start with the winner of the competition, who received a stack of great non-fiction books on language and related subjects by Caroline Taggart (whose latest book, on a related theme, we’ve written about here), provided by the publishers, Michael O’Mara Books.

7 Great Words and Phrases Coined by H. L. Mencken

A septet of great words invented by the American wit, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

H. L. Mencken (Henry Louis Mencken, to give him his full name) was born on this day in 1880, so to toast this great American journalist, critic, and all-round wit, we’ve put together a list of seven words and phrases he is thought to have originated. Fans of word-origins may also enjoy our pick of the most enjoyable and amusing words P. G. Wodehouse invented.

BOOBOISIE: In 1922, Mencken coined the word ‘booboisie’ for uncultured and uneducated members of the general public, i.e. ‘boobs’, modelling the word after the more famous ‘bourgeoisie’.