Though it is frequently hard to tell one from the other there are some basic

guidelines to have in mind when analysing and identifying coinages in a text or

discourse. The first thing to keep in mind is that a coinage is a product of the
process of word creation part of every spoken or written communicative act. The
word coinage derives from coin, which according to The 1996 Concise Oxford
Dictionary of English Etymology, means: a) corner-stone; corner, angle, wedge; b)
die for stamping money; piece of money; coined money, which derives from old
french coignier, coing, which itself derives from the latin cuneus, wedge. As a verb
it means to make coins and by extension to create words. Words, like coins, are
signs or symbols which carry meanings.

Thus a coinage refers to the creation or invention of word. the process of creation
of new word is also called neologism. Language-as-a-system has several ways or
procedures for the creation of words and thus never getting its word stock or
lexicon empty or outdated. Some of these devices are word-compounding,
derivation (word conversion and change of meaning), and affixation.

Word-compounding refers to the faculty and device of language to form new

words by combining or putting together old words. For example, to refer to a
person that frequently expresses or believes that nothing s/he does has a good
result or will have a successful outcome we may call him/her a never-go-well
person. We combine the words never, go and well to form and adjectival
compound.

Derivation is attained when we derive or create w anew word out of an old one.
For example, we create the verb accessorize to mean we provide a person with
accessories, that is, gloves, shoes, dress, belts, etc.
Affixation is the creation of new words by attaching sound or syllabes to the
beginning, the middle, or the word of a word. Of these three the most common are
prefixation and suffixation; that is, attaching prefixes or suffixes to words. A
common colloquial coinage is the word cheapy, which has a despective sense. It is
formed by adding “y” to the adjective cheap. So, something cheapy is something
that in terms of price is ranked below what is on sale. This has social connotation
because a person categorized as cheapy is someone who falls below the economic
standard of poor. Or a person that has some inclination to things that are of low
quality. One example of word-compounding, a very common device of the English
language is a person attaches two or more words together to make them work as
one word. The meanings of the words interrelate in such a way that a new meaning
comes out, very different from the meaning of the words in isolation.

For example, some of these are the words fireman, hardware and the adjectival
compound “never-go-well” phrase “Bertha, I’d like to know you’re so fond of the
never-go-well way”. The first word, the compound fireman, has become part of the
colloquial or everyday language, and now because of the natural process or change
all language go through, is going out of use and is being replaced by the more
politically correct and sexless firefighter. The second one, hardware, is term of the
computer science that has become part of public domain. The third, the word-
compounding expression never-go-well, might or might not become part of
everyday language. Its acceptance and permanence will depend on to what extent
people use it as much as to make it worth of appearing in dictionaries.

Now, let’s get into the question, what is the difference bewteen a colloquial
coinage and a literary coinage? While a coloquial coinage originates in the spoken
variety of language, a literary one is coined by writers and authors. Because of the
nature of the variety they belong to (the oral or spoken variety), colloquial
coinages have a spontaneous and ephimerous character: they originate in the
spoken variety, whose most common form is the conversation or dialogue, and like

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words when spoken, they disappear or go with the wind. This doesn’t mean they
cannot become part of the Standard language. They can, and regularly do, become
part of the word stock of a language after a long process of assimilation by other
language users, and their later fixation: a person creates a word, phrase or term, in
a conversation, it is assumed and repeated by others, and in time, are accepted and
begin to appear in written form and dictionaries, so they become part of the
vocabuary or lexicon of a language. Examples of this are words like hippy, nerd,
and most recently geek, yuppie, hacker, and others.

Notice that, these coinages, colloquial coinages, appear during the social process of
oral interpersonal communication, a dialogue or conversation. Even though they
are uttered by an individual, their birth or appearance is due to, motivated and
produced by, this type of social exchange which is the dialogue or conversation.
On the other side of the street, we have the literary coinages. They are the product
of an individual, usually a writer. Even though literary coinages, because of their
bookish character, tend to last more than colloquial ones, they also disappear in
time and not always become part of the dictionaries. However, unlike colloquial
coinages, literary coinages leave traces on the vocabulary because, like Galperin
says, “they are fixed in the literature of their times”. A good example of coinages
is quoted by the author above-mentioned. This quotation serves both as an example
of coinages and an ironic criticism of the abuse of such a linuistic procedure. Here
it is:

“We diarize, we earlirize; any day we may begin to futurize. We also itinerize,
reliabilize, and we not only decontaminate and dehumidify but we debureaucratize
and we deinsectize. We are, in addition, discovering how good it is to fellowship
with one another.
“I can only say, ´let us finalize with all this nonsense´.”

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This extract was taken from an article that appeared in a February 1957 Ottawa
Evening Journal. Notice how the writer criticizes the abuse of coining that certain
writers commit. Notice how prefixation (the word with the prefix “de-” in bold-
face, and suffixation (the word ending in the italized “ize”) are ironically alluded.
He himself sharpens his criticism by ending his article with the word finalize (itself
a suffixation coinage) as an attempt to terminate with his article what he considers
a bad stylistic tendency. As we have seen, coinages are a natural procedure of word
creation common to all languages. Thus, a coinage is what in linguistics is called a
universal.

There are other word creating procedures like blendings, the fusion of parts of two
words to make a new one; for example, sitcom is a blending of situation and
comedy, cinemactress, of cinema and actress; avigation, of aviation and
navigation, and the literary blending galumph, gallop and triumph (coined by
Lewis Carroll in his neologistic poem jabberwocky. Another word-creation device
is acronyms as when we combine the initials of different words to create another;
for example, the word UNESCO (United Nations Education and Science
Organization). What we have to keep in mind when analysing a text is that
language is a system and as thus it not only provide us with a stock of words but
also with a stock of linguistic resources and rules that secure it own existence.

Examples
• tattarrattat by James Joyce in Ulysses (1922)
• Slithy, as a portmanteau of "slimy" and "lithe"; chortle as a portmanteau of
"chuckle" and "snort"; among several used by Lewis Carroll in
Jabberwocky.
• "Runcible spoon", from Edward Lear, which later came to describe a curved
fork with a cutting edge.
• Unidexter - a one-legged person of the right-legged persuasion. Coined by
comedian Peter Cook in One Leg Too Few.

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• Aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic, one of the English
language's longest words according to the book The Dictionary, was used
once in describing a particular British spa's water.
• Surlecultant in French, meaning that gets you to sit down in a rather vulgar
manner. A rough translation would be 'onto-the-arse-ing'.
• Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from the movie musical Mary Poppins.
• Vquex, used in a game of Scrabble in The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass
Aged 37¾ and claimed to mean a cross between a ferret and a giraffe.
• Kwyjibo used in The Simpsons 'Bart the Genius' in a game of Scrabble,
meaning "a bald, overweight, North American ape of below average
intelligence"
• britva (“razor”), mounch (“snack”), and privodeet (“to lead somewhere”),
from A Clockwork Orange (1962), the novelist Anthony Burgess created a
large vocabulary of nonce words, a language he called nadsat. His
protagonist, Alex, speaks and thinks in nadsat, which is a blend of Cockney
slang and Russian.