Are there any general rules or guidelines for using newly coined word(s) or neologism?

When reading (especially when younger) it is common to come across a word you have never seen before, some of these words you'll need a dictionary for, but sometimes this isn't the case.

Let me give an example using cutease.

she cuteased the panda.

makes no sense if you don't know the word.

She playfully cuteased the panda, giggling while calling it plump and joyfully calling it a pirate bear due to the distinctive black eye markings, even though she knew the panda couldn't understand, sometimes she could swear that pirate bear did understand she was only having fun and that he could tell her jokes came from her love of him.

The reader might not be able to produce a definition for the word after reading that. but it allows a reader invested in the story to gloss over the word still knowing whats happening without interrupting the flow too much.

This is not for everyone, some people just cannot stand literature that uses words they don't know, but as long as they are used sparingly and given a healthy dose of context people will learn words, just as you probably did when learning to read/speak picking up on them from context not studying a dictionary.

posted over 6 years ago

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J.Doe‭

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I think there is one golden rule here: your coinage in the story must follow the conventions and motivations of real-world neologisms.

We create new words for the following reasons:

• An equivalent word to express the idea is absent from the lexicon. 'Telephone' is an example of this; before the object existed, the word did not.

• As word-play. Examples might be portmanteau words, malapropisms, rhyming slang, euphemisms...

• For brevity, particularly with a commonly used word. Consider 'Brexit' as a contraction of 'Britain's exit (from the European Union.)'

To include the word 'Cutease' in your story.

Sorry, I just gagged as I typed that word: it is so perversely saccharine that I can only imagine - with horror - what honeycombed invention would call for its extended use.

To include that word in a story, you will need to:

• Establish its roots, possibly with an origin story in which the word is first coined, or alternatively by placing a character in a position of inferior knowledge.

• Provide adequate need for that word to fall into common usage in your constructed world.

posted over 6 years ago

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Inoutguttiwutts‭

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Shakespeare, who may not have coined all the words he's credited with, but who certainly popularized a lot of neologisms, tended to recapitulate or paraphrase a possibly unfamiliar word in the same sentence.

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red.

Macbeth, Act II, Scene 2.

I try to use the same technique myself --even in conversation --, and have found it effective. The chief challenge is to not make it too clunky or redundant.

posted over 6 years ago

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Chris Sunami‭

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A newly coined word is more likely not to be understood by your readers. Consider: your readers might not hang out in the particular circle where the word was coined and is known. In effect, such a word is not different from a dialect word that's only likely to be understood in a specific city or state. There are even words that would only be understood in, say, Australia, but no-where else in the English-speaking world.

Since it is quite likely that your readers would not understand the word, you need to help them understand. In non-fiction writing, you can provide an explanation or a definition. Where you need more organic usage, such as in fiction writing, you should use the word in such a way that it's meaning is self-evident, similar to how writers sometimes use invented words.

You need to consider who your audience is: if you're writing for a small circle of people who are likely to be already familiar with the word, you need to provide less explanation than if you're writing for a larger market that might include non-native speakers who would rely on a dictionary to help with unfamiliar words, and as you state, would find nothing there. Similarly, writing for a highbrow publication, words that are "too new" and "slang" would be considered inappropriate.

Also, in fiction writing, consider who would be using such words. A 19th-century heroine, or a modern elderly gentleman are not likely to use words recently coined by an internet community.

posted over 6 years ago

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Galastel‭

1885 reputation 81 551 319 3

There is no problem in using new (or even non-existent) words in your story. However...

Writers do this all the time. It is part of the experience to develop a larger vocabulary. But when we learn a new word that we want to use, it is our task to try not to disturb the reader too much by making him interrupt the story and look for the word in a dictionary.

The main part of using these new words is check how they sound and how you would use it in a sentence. Write these sentences down and see if they make sense.

Try to figure out in which context it works best and how to describe this to someone who has never heard about this word before. If the meaning is understood immediately, you are ready to use this in your story.

(A useful resource: University of Toronto - Writing Advice: Dealing with New Words)

posted over 6 years ago

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Totumus Maximus‭

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