5 Ways to Invent New Words

Every two hours a new word is added to the dictionary. By the time you go to bed tonight, there will officially be upwards of a dozen new words in the English language. That’s not to say the dictionary editors invented them. New words are born on the street, in laboratories, at the office: wherever a term is needed to describe a new process, product or state of being. Some languages have an official academy which governs vocabulary and its usage. Not so with English. It is the people, the ones who use the language in day to day life that validate and give meaning to a word. You can see, vocabulary in English is like a big pot of stew. We dump in all kinds of stuff in there. We like the taste of an old word with a new meaning. And we just love to coin a phrase.

Shakespeare is credited with inventing somewhere around 2000 words and phrases. Advertising, fashionable and champion are but a few. You too can invent words that may some day be found in the Oxford English Dictionary. Here are 5 ways to go about it:

Verbing

Step 1: pick a noun.

Step 2: use it as a verb.

Want some examples? Just google it.

Adjectivicate (verb: to make a verb or noun into an adjective)

Ok, so I made that up. See how easy it is to invent words? To adjectivicate all you have to do is add ‘ed,’ ‘ing’ or ‘y’ to the end of the word. ‘Bloody,’ ‘gnarled’  and ‘blushing’ are all words Shakespeare invented using this trick.

Portmanteaus

Portmanteau is a french word meaning coat rack. In linguistics, it refers to the putting together of parts of different words to form a new one. Says Humpty Dumpty to Alice in ‘Through the Looking Glass:’ “You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.” Here are a few examples:

Smoke + fog = smog

Breakfast + lunch = brunch

Bill + Hillary Clinton = Billary

Agglutination

You can decorate almost any word with a prefix and/or a suffix to make a completely new word. Adding a prefix changes the meaning of the word -- 3 little letters make the difference between an agreement and the total opposite. Suffixes changes the function of the word, to a verb, an adjective, a noun or an adverb.

Let your Hair Down

My husband’s first language is Catalan. When we first met his English was shaky and my Catalan was nil so we invented a lot of words to communicate with each other. ‘Flaunchy’ describes yesterday’s pizza or a weak idea. ‘Jocho’ (/hOw-ChOw/) means ‘holy crap.’ And we call our kids ‘bumby-heads’ when they do something stupid.

Have you invented a word? Share it with us here:

“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!” Audrey Hepburn

Have fun!

Jennifer