Quotes About Neologism

a particularly American ability to come up with consistently dreadful names for new things. Just as there is an inspiring national talent to invent stuff and to think forward, so there is an equal and opposite imaginative black hole when it comes to naming the stuff: the conflation and truncation of words, adding extraneous vowels and hyphens to the portmanteau.

What did "psychosassic" mean? It was his own word and he vigorously denied that it meant anything at all.

For example, a telegram is a "lightning-letter"; a wireless telegram is a "not-have-wire-lightning-communication"; a fountain-pen is a "self-flow-ink-water-brush"; a typewriter is a "strike-letter-machine". Most of these neologisms are similar in the modern languages of China and Japan.

Political folk talk a lot these days about 'messaging' - a neologism designed to describe the way in which parties and politicians consciously characterize their efforts. It is only intended to be positive - i.e., 'Our messaging is designed to show we care.'

how outrageous could he get, in the realm of fatuous neologism, and still achieve praise?

If Shakespeare required a word and had not met it in civilised discourse, he unhesitatingly made it up.

Political folk talk a lot these days about 'messaging' - a neologism designed to describe the way in which parties and politicians consciously characterize their efforts. It is only intended to be positive - i.e., 'Our messaging is designed to show we care.'

To be honest, I struggle with words. I often forget them, you know, the official ones. Instead, I make words up. I use home-made words that sound similar to the real thing. Usually, they're some sort of confused hybrid of two existing words.

everyone everywhere suddenly was to 'distance learn,' that awkward, heartless neologism

Emoticon" is] one of the worst words ever--it deserves to die horribly in a head-on crash with infotainment .

To coin new words is to arrogate to oneself legislative power in matters of language, which is rarely successful [...]

He is forced to coin words himself, and, taking his pain in one hand, and a lump of pure sound in the other (as perhaps the people of Babel did in the beginning), so to crush them together that a brand new word in the end drops out.

Eventually, Magellan gave the Indians a name—Pathagoni, a neologism

If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.

how modern Hebrew has recently coined a rather recherché template, the passive of the reflexive ('he was made to snog himself'),

ICTs are modifying the very nature of, and hence what we mean by, reality, by transforming it into an infosphere. Infosphere is a neologism coined in the seventies. It is based on 'biosphere', a term referring to that limited region on our planet that supports life. It is also a concept that is quickly evolving.

You may not have heard, Duke, that there is a new word to describe that sort of attitude," said the archivist, who was Secretary to the Committee against Reconsideration, "One says 'mentality.' It means exactly the same thing, but it has the advantage that nobody knows what you're talking about. It's the ne plus ultra just now, the 'latest thing,' as they say.