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Inventing words is relatively simple as you do not need to actually make anything. We’ve already discussed making concepts by combining unrelated words in the post: Utopia, an Erotic Mystery – Used to Exemplify the Stretch Technique of Creativity and Invention. Inventing words is a little different and often comes up in the realm of trademarks. Trademarks are usually used for the name of a product of service.
I was a Patent Agent and Trademarks were along side so I have a little training on them. They should be suggestive but not descriptive. So you do not name your white staple invention, white staples. You would trademark it as Stealth – so we have Stealth brand staples. Now that is not making up a word but many people do for trademarks. Styrofoam, Kleenex. Kleenex suggests clean.
When making Web games or sites, sometimes you get a chance to make up words. Here are a few that I have made up:
- Gorgolon – an underwater civilization where the bubbles in their filtration system make a “gorgle”.
- Opartica – an online art maker
- Infizoom, Congon, Kitekilt, Choofu are combinations of shortened words for Motogami or motion games
- Gycopo is an acronym word for game you can only play once
- YesUmNo again a combination word for a voting game where you actually use the word as interface to vote yes, maybe (um) or no.
- Tilator – is a word plus an ending for a tiling tool.
Endings can be fun – we had an art movement called the Figmentalisticanarianismists. That reminds me, aside from names of things there are also words like traditional words where you are naming a concept:
- Nodism – is the philosophy of connection or nodes and in particular for a single hierarchy
- Focuso – the art of shooting photographs out of focus
There are words being invented all the time to cover our evolving experiences. There are a number of sites that foster this invention like wordspy. Some of these catch on better than others and the concept of memes is certainly related – memes also being a fairly newly invented word.
So have fun thinking of a word or two – often, as an Inventor, you need a name for your product or service or thought. If you have any words you would like to share, please leave a comment! I am currently inventing a technique to encourage more comments and will launch that here soon.
Gaven Dianda did the Figmentalisticanarianismist poster – it was a show of our posters primarily and some other art we did at the time sometime in the early nineties.
Antidisestablishmentarianism
Figmentalisticanarianismists
Same number of letters – coincidence? Yes. Mind you, I did not look up the spelling of the former but I remember my mom showing me that word in the dictionary when I was little – it was one of her favorites.
Inventing words happen all the time. Sometimes my friends invent words for jokes. Their words are random and they come up in conversations once in a while. In the Toronto Star, on Sundays, I think, there’s a tiny list of new words and definitions. They tend to be ridiculous and no one ever uses them, but they exist nonetheless. Probably not in Webster, but in some dictionary somewhere.
Word inventing is probably one of the greatest things to do. As an amateur writer, I often find myself playing with words. Add in that I write in fantasy worlds, where concepts like magic exist, I often have to invent new words. It tends to be a rather fun experience, although stressful when I can’t make a word I actually like.
One word: multilinguisticism
What does it mean? God knows, although, practical knowledge suggests that it could mean ‘many languages’ although, it’s not what I originally intended for it to mean. So what does it mean? The study of multiple languages at the same time. Small change, a world of difference. Words, amazing things, just a couple here and a couple there, and things take on a whole new meaning.
Next word: antifacistation
Basically meaning ‘against facist regimes.’
Word making is fun, but something that people miss is that the word should be fairly easy to PRONOUNCE. Although, it’s funny listening to someone trying to say the word, much less understand what it means. So, in a sense, it can be a gratifying experience, however you wish to look at this.
I think to a certain extent everyone has at one point in time invented a word. How often do we think of two words to say at one time and they blend into one another?
Example run and jogged. I wanted to tell a friend that I was running in the park but then thought jogging was more accurate. What came out was, “I was rogging in the park”. Not a great word, but it’s something that happens.
Moreover, I think in recent times joining words together has become a popular fad. Bennifer, anyone? My friends and I have recently found great fun in labeling wannabe things with an ‘f’ (for fake) in front of it. We found someone that looked like my brother Yuri in Cuba recently and we dubbed him F-Yuri.
I agree that word inventing is a really fun thing to do. The invented word could be very easy to understand, and it also can contains lots of information. But there are already so many words in one language, not to mention that there are so many languages in the world as well. I just hoping that one day, there would be a great invention that people could communicate with each other by minds, other than words.
I appreciate Webster’s efforts in creating a dictionary and all, but I also think that word invention is great on a more venacular level. It expands your ability to express yourself in a unique and maybe even more accurate way. If you listen to/ read current media it sounds like we’re speaking from a limited list of expressions. It’s like we all have a bad case of linguisticalpolyclicheism.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/decline/orwell1.htm