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Writing an answer to another question, I stumbled upon a quote from The Hobbit: Bilbo rushed along the passage, very angry, and altogether bewildered and bewuthered - this was the most awkward ...
#4: Attribution notice removed
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#3: Attribution notice added
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/39881 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
Writing an answer to another question, I stumbled upon a quote from _The Hobbit_: > Bilbo rushed along the passage, very angry, and altogether bewildered and bewuthered - this was the most awkward Wednesday he ever remembered. (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, chapter 1 - An Unexpected Party) 'Bewuthered' is a word coined by Tolkien. Other coinages by Tolkien include 'flammifer' and 'eucatastrophe'. Which made me wonder: when would an author coin a word, rather than use what's already in existence? Note, I am not talking about terms for new fantastical beings, like 'hobbit'. 'Bewuthered' appears to mean something along the lines of 'confused'. So what prompts an author to coin a new word? How does one go about it? And what does one tell the editor, when the editor insists "_bewuthered_ is not a word"?