How is a word created? How does it become a generally accepted term by a population?
In: Culture
In addition to everything said here, dictionaries can also “just” add words. It’s always interesting to see what Mariam Webster adds year by year.
[new words 2019](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/new-words-in-the-dictionary)
There can be existing words that are modified (eg. magestical) or made up words (like today’s slang) .
Mainly these words need to be said a lot and then they sort of become offical.
That’s the best explaination I have.
I feel like this phenomenon is a bit too complicated to eli5 but here’s the best I’ve got.
We know there are different shades of red. For a long time though, we only had one way to describe the different shades so they were all red. The some day, some one said something like “burgundy” or “crimson”.
We find a new way to describe something so that ideas become more robust and easier to picture for others.
Most English words started as Latin or Greek. They were spoken in Latin or Greek by English speakers until people 1) misspelled them more frequently (both on purpose and accidentally) and the misspelling became a more common English word, or 2) purposely added the Latin or Greek word to another part of another word to create a brand new word, or 3) existed unchanged until today, still to be spoken by English speakers.
Examples of each of those:
1) The Latin word *pictura* was eventually changed to the English word *picture*.
2) The Latin words *corna* (which means *horn*) and *copia* (which means *plenty*) were combined to make the English word *cornucopia*.
3) The Latin words *villa* and *aqua* meaning *house* and *water* still mean the same things today.
Not a language expert. But i assume that our earliest ancestors needed to communicate. What started off as grunts or sounds needed to become more complex to actually describe what they were trying to communicate to each other. Eventually rules were made to help everybody understand each other and language developed from there.
English as a language is a mash up of many different languages, with words that have their origin in all sorts of ancient and more modern languages.
Nowadays words are either made my mashing words together or modifying already existent words (think spork) or just making up a new word and if enough people use it and it catches on, then that’s a word.
Scientific words are often based on latin or Greek origins, or named after the discoverer or something important to the discoverer.
From POV of a schizophreniac with perhaps thousands of neologisms… a fellow will find making the word is the easy part. Harder is to to get them to overcome their miscalors unto him and to use the words themselves.
To that end, more acceptable than the purest neologisms, such as *quark* or whatever keyboard spam, easier are the derivations, the lowest liberties, the *neologoses*. For example, as the dominant does dominate, the *complicant* does complicate. Shouldn’t they? Wouldn’t you be more willing to use that word than, say, *schlarf* for that purpose? Did you even need a definition?
There is something which when tasteful is called poetry, and when tasteless and helplessly overdone is called psychiatric *clanging*. To put words together satisfied only that at the intersection of sound and feeling, they’re *right* together. It is a schizophrenicē, if not as quantifiable as its direct consequence in the plurality of neologisms that schizophrenics produce.
But quantifiable or not, it may helps them produce the best words of all.
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