Neologism

3 Key excerpts on "Neologism"

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  eBook - ePub

  Analogy in Word-formation

  A Study of English Neologisms and Occasionalisms

  • Elisa Mattiello(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  per se has diachronic relevance. A word is truly new only at the time when it enters the lexicon of a language. By contrast, when a word is attested in prominent dictionaries for decades and becomes part of the common vocabulary, it is no longer felt as a proper Neologism.

  In diachrony, new words can be classified into:

  Past Neologisms: Several new words were introduced into the English lexicon during the Early Modern English period (late fifteenth century‒late seventeenth century), when the greatest vocabulary expansion of English was recorded. Words coming from Latin (e.g. agenda [a 1623], data [1645], †instruct [1529], nucleus [1668], propaganda [1668]) or French (e.g. brigade [a 1649], civilisation [1656], elegant [c 1475], regime [c 1475]) contributed to this expansion (Mazzaferro 2009: 39). However, they represent Neologisms only from a historical viewpoint, in that synchronically they are no longer considered ‘new words’.

  Recent Neologisms: A great number of novel words have entered the English vocabulary since the last century, especially in the 1980s–1990s, with the advent of new technologies and new media, such as the Internet. They include words like blog [1999] ← web + log (OED3), e-reader [1999] ‘a hand-held electronic device used for reading e-books’ (OED3), netizen [1984] ← net + citizen (OED3), and vapourware [1993], used humorously for ‘a piece of software which, despite being publicized or marketed, does not exist’ (OED2), which have become part of the institutionalised language and are, therefore, codified in dictionaries.

  Present-day Neologisms/occasionalisms: Newly coined words enrich the English vocabulary every day, with analogy playing a fundamental role in their coinage. Most of them originate from the news, tabloids, TV shows, sit-coms, blogs, social network sites, and other state-of-the-art genres. Some are occasionalisms in the traditional sense, because they have expressly been coined for a single occasion and tend to vanish as rapidly as they have been created. A case in point is the ephemeral verb prooflisten [2000] ‘to listen to a recording of words or music to check for errors’ (after proofread [1845]), which occurred in Christine Webb’s letter of 4th March 2000 in The Guardian , and was later recorded in Wordspy . Other words, instead, seem more stable. The word advertainment [1999], for instance, occurs eleven times in The Guardian complete archive and once in The Independent and in COCA (“They believe disclaimers will ruin the beauty of ‘advertainment ’”, 2004). Therefore, like its attested analogues docutainment [1978] ‘a film or other presentation which includes documentary materials, and seeks both to inform and entertain’ (OED2), infotainment [1980] ‘broadcast material which seeks to inform and entertain simultaneously’ (OED3), and edutainment

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  Analysing Sign Language Poetry

  • R. Sutton-Spence(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  5 Neologisms 69 Neologism – the creation of new words – can be used for poetic effect in many ways, bringing the language to the foreground because the poet has produced a form that is not already a part of the language. The cre- ative use of sign language to produce new signs has also been called poetic ‘wit’, and is related to the way that signers can produce strong visual imagery by creative treatment of the visual form of the signs. Words are familiar and predictable and we scarcely notice them in everyday language, except for the overall message that groups of them convey. New words, however, make us sit up and take notice. Newly created words in a poem are unfamiliar, and so unpredictable that we have to think carefully about them and why the poet made them in that way. The poet wants the audience to focus on the language in the poem, and using a new word is a good way to get it noticed. Although all speakers or signers use their knowledge of the formational rules of the language to create occasional new words when necessary, the poet’s creativity has been to apply word-making rules with unusual frequency, to create words that no one else has thought to create, perhaps with a new meaning that no one has thought of. There are, essentially, two different ways of making new words: making up the word from existing elements in the language, or borrowing a word from another language. Both these strategies occur in sign language poetry. Visually motivated Neologisms Poets in the English language make up new words in their poems. The Irish writer James Joyce was a great creator of Neologisms, and his works such as Finnegans Wake are full of them. His words are often made by blending elements of other words in new ways. Neologisms such as museyroom and grasshoper have recognisable elements in them (‘muse’, ‘room’, ‘grass’ and ‘hope’) but the reader’s task is to work out, based on the sounds of the words, what the new word might mean.

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  French Words

  Past, Present and Future

  • Malcolm Offord(Author)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • Multilingual Matters

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 5 Words with a Short History – Neologisms The French vocabulary is changing constantly, undergoing a permanent process of renewal. Words drop out of use – consulting dictionaries of earlier periods will soon confirm this. But more importantly new words – Neologisms – are being constantly produced. These fall into three major categories – (1) Borrowings from other languages. (2) Internal creations – words made from elements already existing in French. (3) Changes of meaning of already existing French words. Caveat 1 • Only some of the words created every year will become permanent features of the language, but it is a risky business trying to predict which ones will survive and which will disappear. • Obviously those which are tied to a particular event, which was significant at the time but which soon fades into obscurity, or an individual’s name, that of 97 Chapter 5 Exercise Which of the following are likely to have disappeared from use and are unlikely to be still recorded in a dictionary of contemporary French? Why? balance des paiements = balance of payments besanter = to decorate with besants (coins from Byzantium) congé de maternité = maternity leave coût-efficacité = cost-effectiveness festage = tax paid to lord when ridge-piece of roof laid gonfanon = pennant attached to a lance se guimpler = to put on a wimple joste = joust missile de croisière = cruise missile pull = pullover Neologism For our purposes Neologisms are those words which have entered French, by whatever means, over the past fifty years, in other words since the middle of the 20th century. a star or politician who occupied centre stage for a short period but who was soon forgotten or replaced by another star or politician, are the least likely to find their way into dictionaries.

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