Neologism
In linguistics, a neologism (/niˈɒləˌdʒɪzəm/; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language.
[2] Neologisms are one facet of lexical innovation, i.e., the linguistic process of new terms and meanings entering a language's lexicon.
[citation needed] Examples of words that were 20th-century neologisms include laser (1960), an acronym of light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation; robot (1921) from Czech writer Karel Čapek's play R.U.R.
[9] Neologisms can become popular through memetics, through mass media, the Internet, and word of mouth, including academic discourse in many fields renowned for their use of distinctive jargon, and often become accepted parts of the language.
Anyone such as a lexicographer or an etymologist might study neologisms, how their uses span the scope of human expression, and how, due to science and technology, they spread more rapidly than ever before in the present times.
Examples include "grok" (to intuitively understand) from the science fiction novel about a Martian entitled Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein; "McJob" (precarious, poorly-paid employment) from Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland; "cyberspace" (widespread, interconnected digital technology) from Neuromancer by William Gibson[21] and "quark" (Slavic slang for "rubbish"; German for a type of dairy product) from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
This includes such words as "Orwellian" (from George Orwell, referring to his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four) and "Kafkaesque" (from Franz Kafka).
So Plato introduced the Greek term ποιότης (poiotēs), which Cicero rendered with Latin qualitas, which subsequently became our notion of 'quality' in relation to epistemology, e.g., a quality or attribute of a perceived object, as opposed to its essence.
In physics, new terms were introduced sometimes via nonce formation (e.g., Murray Gell-Man's quark, taken from James Joyce) or through derivation (e.g. John von Neumann's kiloton, coined by combining the common prefix kilo- 'thousand' with the noun ton).
[26]: 50 Some verlan words, such as meuf ("femme", which means "woman" roughly backwards), have become so commonplace that they have been included in the Petit Larousse.
Examples of pop-culture neologisms include the American alt-Right (2010s), the Canadian portmanteau "Snowmageddon" (2009), the Russian parody "Monstration" (c. 2004), Santorum (c. 2003).
[citation needed] "DoggoLingo", a term still below the threshold of a neologism according to Merriam-Webster,[31] is an example of the latter which has specifically spread primarily through Facebook group and Twitter account use.
[31] The suspected origin of this way of referring to dogs stems from a Facebook group founded in 2008 and gaining popularity in 2014 in Australia.
[39][40] This can be seen in schizophrenia, where a person may replace a word with a nonsensical one of their own invention (e.g., "I got so angry I picked up a dish and threw it at the gelsinger").
