Questions tagged [word-coinage]
For questions regarding authors' creation of new words (e.g. "tintinnabulation" by Edgar Allan Poe).
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Did Koestler coin "mimophant"?
Wikipedia says:
Koestler is said to have coined the word mimophant to describe Bobby Fischer.
There are two sources given for this statement. One of them is not a source but simply a quote defining ...
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Shakespeare's vasty deep: was "vasty" a recognised variant of "vast" at the time?
From Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1, Act III Scene 1:
GLENDOWER: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
HOTSPUR: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
...
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What are T. S. Eliot’s “Jellicle Cats” and “Pollicle Dogs”?
T. S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Song of the Jellicles’ was first published in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939) and was popularized by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats. It begins:
Jellicle Cats ...
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Does Joyce, in Finnegans Wake or Ulysses, link the sound form "hoe" to "whore"?
Does Joyce, in Finnegans Wake or Ulysses, link the sound form "hoe" to "whore", as in the current day "ho"?
For example, is it probable that Joyce intended the (additional) modern day pun in the ...
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Does "egourge" in Finnegans Wake derive from the Greek "egoourgos" meaning "worker for the self"?
Finnwake.com claims that "egourge", in the following line from Finnegans Wake (p.g. 49-50), derives from "egoourgos (gr) - worker for the self", but Google Translate does not seem to know of any word "...
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The origin of Tolkien's use of the term "hobbit"
In a footnote on page 29 of The Lay of Aotrou & Itroun Verlyn Flieger notes
the word korigans appears in the 1891 compendium of folklore known as The Denham Tracts (Vol. II, p. 79) where it is ...
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What is the correct term for "fine words"?
Usually when writing poems or literature, the authors looks for words that can convey their ideas faithfully. The same thing happens to the readers, when suddenly they understand the problem so clear. ...
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Did Joseph Heller invent this particular use of the verb "to disappear" in Catch-22 or merely popularize it?
When Nurse Duckett informed Yossarian in Catch-22 that the Brass was planning to "disappear" Dunbar, Yossarian replied that "It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it ...
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How did people know the meaning to Shakespeare's new words?
I don't pretend to know much about the history of literature, but I was always told that Shakespeare invented an awful lot of words, 1700 is usually the number given. How did anyone know what they ...
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How big an impact did Lewis Carroll have on the English language?
Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" was, at the time it was written, even more nonsensical than it seems today, because some of the words which Carroll invented for it have since passed into common usage in ...
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How many of Shakespeare's words in his plays were new?
William Shakespeare is famous for using many words in his plays which were new introductions to the English language. According to Shakespeare Online:
The English language owes a great debt to ...
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