NEOLOGISMS
A neologism is a new word or phrase, or a new sense of a word or phrase, that has not yet passed into common use.
If no new words were to appear, it would be a sign that the language was moribund;
but it is well that each new word that does appear should be scrutinized.
1. The progress of arts and sciences gives occasion for the large majority of new words; for a new thing we must have a new name; hence, for instance, motor, argon, appendicitis. It is interesting to see that the last word did not exist, or was at least too obscure to be recorded, when the Oxford Dictionary began to come out in 1888; we cannot do without it now.
2. A 'nonceword' (and the use might be extended to 'nonce-phrase' and 'nonce-sense'—the latter not necessarily, though it may be sometimes, equivalent to nonsense) is one that is constructed to serve a need of the moment. The writer is not seriously putting forward his word as one that is for the future to have an independent existence; he merely has a fancy to it for this once. The motive may be laziness, avoidance of the obvious, love of precision, or desire for a brevity or pregnancy that the language as at present constituted does not seem to him to admit of. The first two are bad motives, the third a good, and the last a mixed one. But in all cases it may be said that a writer should not indulge in these unless he is quite sure he is a good writer.
The couch-bunk under the window to conceal the summerly recliner.—Meredith.
The adjective is a nonce-sense, summerly elsewhere meaning 'such as one expects in summer'.
In Christian art we may clearly trace a parallel regenesis.—Spencer.
Opposition on the part of the loquently weaker of the pair.—Meredith.
Picturesquities.—Sladen.
The verberant twang of a musical instrument.—Meredith.
Russia's disposition is aggressive...Japan may conquer, but she will not aggress.—Times.
Though aggress is in the dictionary, every one will feel that it is rare enough to be practically a neologism, and here a nonce-word. The mere fact that it has never been brought into common use, though so obvious a form, is sufficient condemnation.
All these formations, whether happy or the reverse, may be assumed to be conscious ones: the few that now follow—we shall call them new even if they have a place in dictionaries, since they are certainly not current—are possibly unconscious:
The minutes to dinner-time were numbered, and they briskened their steps back to the house.—E. F. Benson. (quickened)
He was in some amazement at himself...remindful of the different nature...—Meredith. (mindful)
Persistent insuccess, however, did not prevent a repetition of the same question.—Times. (failure)
The best safeguard against any deplacement of the centre of gravity in the Dual Monarchy.—Times. (displacement)
Which would condemn the East to a long period of unquiet.—Times. (unrest)
Mere slips, very likely. If it is supposed that therefore they are not worth notice, the answer is that they are indeed quite unimportant in a writer who allows himself only one such slip in fifty or a hundred pages; but one who is unfortunate enough to make a second before the first has faded from the memory becomes at once a suspect. We are uneasily on the watch for his next lapse, wonder if he is not at home in the literary language, and fall into that critical temper which is the last he would choose to be read in.
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