Wednesday, 25 November 2009

Made up words! make your own words!

How to Create a Made Up Word
A Dublin theater proprietor named Richard Daly made a bet that he could create a nonsense word and within 48 hours that word would be on everyone's lips and they would have made up a meaning for it. He won that bet by painting the word "quiz" all over town. While this may not be the true story, or even your intent when creating a made-up word, making up words can be fun, and by following a few simple steps you can expand the ways you do just that. Be careful, though. You might end up creating insquantulous muskaroons that are downright sprunky.
Understand that English words are created in the following ways:

Steps:
Greek and Latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes. By taking a glance at the links below by Infoplease, you may recognize some common word portions already.
Technology, especially as it relates to computers and the Internet. Examples of these can be found at Technology Dictionary.
Other countries. For example, "restaurant" is a word that was picked up directly from the French. See if you can find any at Foreignword.com.
Basic need. Sniglets are a humorous example of this.
Try a portmanteau. This is two words mashed together to create one new word that has attributes of both of the previous words. For example, Australian + Indonesian = Australesian, which could mean "someone hailing from Australia and Indonesia."
Determine why you want to create a word. Is it for the same reason Sniglets were made, because there is an object or use that simply needs a word? Or is it because you just have a few minutes to spare and you want to make up a word, or a handful of them?
Mix and match from the above until you find the word or words you want.
Have fun.

Tips:
Another technique you can use is mixing and matching basic syllabic sounds. For example: sh+na+thee could then be spelled "Sh'nathe" and--voilĂ !--you now have the name of an Elven town (or a really cruel way to say "She's nasty").
If you like, put your made-up words on the discussion page for everyone to see. Who knows? You could be as somewhat-famous as Richard Daly and the word "quiz."
Try posting it on online dictionary websites, like urbandictionary.com. It just might catch on!
Read Jabberwocky for inspiration. It has lots of made-up words that somehow manage to sound just like what they mean.
Once your word has been created, don't use it too much. Use it when it makes sense, and explain it if someone asks what it means. The more you use it in the right scenario, the more you will notice your friends using it!
If you are going to create many monikers, then make up your own dictionary of made-up words. You never know, one of your words may appear in a real one one day!

warnings:
Don't consider Richard Daly's example (mentioned in the summary) as an excuse to graffiti your made-up word all over town.
Don't worry about skipping steps; the point is just to have fun.
Most scholarly dictionaries consider words to be neologisms or protologisms unless they are in widespread use over some period of time. Don't submit made-up words where they're not wanted.

From: http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Made-Up-Word


MY MADE UP WORDS:
1. Adultivity:
The state or condition of being an adult.
2. Banjoologist:
An expert in banjo based musical styles
3. Drunkening:
The process of becoming drunk, a gerund form of the pseudo-verb "To Drunken".
4. Screamapillar:
A caterpillar that screams nearly all the time, even as it sleeps. Without constant reassurement, it will die, and it is sexually attracted to fire. It is endangered and illegal to kill one, despite the fact that it is a menace
5. Nuisancefon:
Mock German, meaning a phone which causes distress.

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