I am no huge fan of Stephen King, but I recently read a short story by him in the compilation of Everything’s Eventual, and in one of the stories, he makes up a word called “sankofite”. I thought it was very neat sounding.
Any other words made up by writers that slam a point home, embellish creatively or otherwise play a significant role in a story?
Crivens!
Waily waily waily!
Both useful exclaimations from Prachett’s Wee Free Men books.
Crivens? Nice one. I can think of a few uses for what I think that “word” means!
It means exactly what you think it means - it’s an exclaimation of Oh Goodness! or something much stronger.
Wee Free Men are kids books but SO GOOD.
Larry Niven-Tanj!
There Ain’t No Justice
Timeloose from Radix by A. A. Attanasio : An entity not constrained by time
Illuders ( From A Planet Called Treason ) : People who can manipulate the minds of others and appear as they wish to be.
Flintsteel ( From the Bolo stories ) : An extremely tough metal.
Isaac Asimov was proud to say he appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary 4 times, so he not only made up words, but he got others to use them, somehow. Maybe I misremembered the number, as I can only think of 3–Robotics, Robotic, and Psychohistory.
Of course, Lewis Carroll had a couple of his neologisms catch on. Chortle and Vorpal (caught on in a subculture, at least) are the two I can think of right off. He also coined the linguistic sense of ‘portmanteau.’
I think perhaps the coolest thing any science has done for a cartoonist is that the paleontologists who study dinosaurs have actually begun to use ‘Thagomizer’ in scholarly papers to refer to the spiked tail some herbivores sported. It’s from a joke in Gary Larson’s Far Side.
He had more than that. His “Jabberwocky” not only gave up those, but “galumphing” and “burbled” as well.
I know it’s debatable, but I was taught as a kid that Poe made up a word for the sound of the bells.
**Tintinnabulation **
“Cromulent”, from The Simpsons. Now widely acknowledged to mean “Valid” or “acceptable”. (As in, “That’s a perfectly cromulent explanation”)
Better still: Tasp.
Legalize direct-current stimulus! LEGALIZE WIREHEADING!
Fnord.
Tanstaafl!
Damnit, just what I was going to come in to say.
(Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to turn a fan on to drown out the faint hiss/ring)
Dakka. Can’t ever have 'nuff dakka.
The fourth one is “positronic”.
From Heinlein, meanwhile, we get “waldo” and “grok”. Which, amazingly, is in Firefox’s spelling list.
I’ve never been a fan of that one, to be honest.
Firstly, it sounds like the capital of either a West African country or an Indian Raj, and secondly, automatic weapons don’t go “Dakkadakkadakkadakka” when the’re fired in real life (at least, not in my experience).
I like granfalloon and karass, coined by Kurt Vonnegut. If I remember right, a granfalloon is a meaningless connection or association that people wrongly consider to be an actual connection. I think Vonnegut used “Hoosiers” as an example. A karass is kind of the opposite of a granfalloon, people who are deeply connected somehow and don’t know it.
There are others from A Clockwork Orange, but groodies will do for now.
Hey, it’s great to see that someone else remembers these two words. Not only are they great words, but I totally identify with the philosophical concepts.
It’s only a matter of time until someone mentions Stephen R Donaldson…