Oops, strike that, SRD’s words are incredibly obscure, but not ‘made up’
Does nerd count? Dr. Seuss used it first.
Interesting replies. Some of them I’ve read/heard of, others, not. I wonder what the qualifier is for a made-up word to become an actual word (appear in a dictionary)? Just popular use?
I love the Vonnegut references, and Poe’s.
I think that there may be more coined words in Cat’s Cradle, but those are the only ones I remember.
To take it a slightly different direction, I’ve always liked “runcible”, coined by Edward Lear.
They dined on mince and slices of quince,
which they ate with a runcible spoon.
Assassination as invented by a certain W. Shakespeare. Yes, I know about the original assassins from the crusades. But Bill was the first one to use it thus.
Interfrastically is a made-up (by Blackadder) made-up (by the writers Elton and Curtis) word that I use a lot. A double whammy of made up wordage!
Lobstrosity is a fun word. Deadly crustaceans from Stephen King’s Dark Tower books.
And all the Sailors and Admirals cried
When they saw him nearing the further side –
"He has gone to fish, for his Aunt Jobiska’s
“Runcible Cat with crimson whiskers!”
Lotsa made-up words in Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. Some correspond perfectly to existing English words and appear to have been used merely for effect, e.g., “syndev” (syntactic device) for “computer.” Others do not and might make useful additions to the English vocabulary – e.g., “sline.”
Also “pocket calculator.”
Some others:
Serendipity
Bandersnatch (Carrol again).
Robot, of course (Karel Capek)
Is there such a thing anywhere as a definitive list of English words, in common usage, and of known coinage as opposed to historical etymology?
Hijack: And is there such a thing as a set of lists (not definitions, etc., just lists) of English words broken down by language of origin? E.g., an alphabetical list of all words known to derive from Old English; another of words derived from Danish (dating from the years of the Danelaw in England); of words derived from Norman French; of words derived from Latin, Greek, Spanish, etc. That would be a very interesting resource – and simple, though laborious, to prepare. The OED staff could simply go through every word in the OED and, well, sort it into a pile.
I thought that William Gibson’s word cyberspace would have already been noted.
A word that I still use from Frascape is frell.
For that matter, he came up with “Alligator” and “Bedroom”. And a whole whopload of others.
Kipple. It’s a perfect word for piled up junk mail and paper crap on the kitchen counter and I’ve used it for decades. Come to think of it, I know my kid knows what it means, but I’m not at all sure she knows where it came from.
Bastard!
Lear had some prime nonsense, and the Jabberwocky stuff is great too. I also enjoyed some of Burgess’s NADSAT, especially litso and droog.
If we’re allowed screenwriters, I’m quite fond of cloff-prunker*.
*An illicit practice whereby one person frangilates another’s slimp - that is, he or she gratifies the other person by smuctating them avially.
Hoopy frood
Ira Levin’s adjective “Stepford.”
Another from Larry Niven-Rishathra “Sexual practice outside one’s own species but within the intelligent hominoids”