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A neologism ( /niːˈɒlədʒɪzəm/; from Greek νέο- (néo-), meaning "new", and λόγος (lógos), meaning "speech, utterance") is a newly coined term, word, or phrase, that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language. Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event. Neolexia (Greek: a "new word", or the act of creating a new word) is a fully equivalent term.

The term neologism is first attested in English in 1772, borrowed from French néologisme (1734).^[1]

In psychiatry, the term neologism is used to describe the use of words that have meaning only to the person who uses them, independent of their common meaning.^[2] This is considered normal in children, but a symptom of thought disorder (indicative of a psychotic mental illness, such as schizophrenia) in adults.^[3] People with autism also may create neologisms.^[4] Additionally, use of neologisms may be related to aphasia acquired after brain damage resulting from a stroke or head injury.^[5]

In theology, a neologism is a relatively new doctrine (for example, Transcendentalism). In this sense, a neologist is one who proposes either a new doctrine or a new interpretation of source material such as religious texts.^[6]

Background[link]

Neologisms are often created by combining existing words (see compound noun and adjective) or by giving words new and unique suffixes or prefixes. Portmanteaux are combined words that are sometimes used commonly. "Brunch" is an example of a portmanteau word (breakfast + lunch). Lewis Carroll's "snark" (snake + shark) is also a portmanteau. Neologisms also can be created through abbreviation or acronym, by intentionally rhyming with existing words or simply through playing with sounds.

Neologisms can become popular through memetics, by way of mass media, the Internet, and word of mouth, including academic discourse in many fields renowned for their use of distinctive jargon, and often become accepted parts of the language. Other times, however, they disappear from common use just as readily as they appeared. Whether a neologism continues as part of the language depends on many factors, probably the most important of which is acceptance by the public. It is unusual, however, for a word to enter common use if it does not resemble another word or words in an identifiable way.

When a word or phrase is no longer "new", it is no longer a neologism. Neologisms may take decades to become "old", however. Opinions differ on exactly how old a word must be to cease being considered a neologism.

Sources[link]

Popular examples of neologism can be found in science, fiction, branding, literature, linguistic and popular culture. Examples include laser (1960) from Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, robotics (1941), agitprop (1930), searchency (2010) .

Literature[link]

Many neologisms have come from popular literature and tend to appear in different forms. Most commonly, they are simply taken from a word used in the narrative of a book; a few representative examples are: "grok" (to achieve complete intuitive understanding), from Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein; "McJob", from Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland; "cyberspace", from Neuromancer by William Gibson; "nymphet" from Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.

Sometimes the title of a book becomes the neologism, for instance, Catch-22 (from the title of Joseph Heller's novel). Alternatively, the author's name may become the neologism, although the term is sometimes based on only one work of that author. This includes such words as "Orwellian" (from George Orwell, referring to his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four) and "Ballardesque" or "Ballardian" (from J.G. Ballard, author of Crash). The word "sadistic" is derived from the cruel sexual practices Marquis de Sade described in his novels. Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle was the container of the Bokononism family of nonce words.

Another category is words derived from famous characters in literature, such as quixotic (referring to the titular character in Don Quixote de la Mancha by Cervantes), a scrooge (from the main character in Dickens's A Christmas Carol), or a pollyanna (from Eleanor H. Porter's book of the same name). James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, composed in a uniquely complex linguistic style, coined the words monomyth and quark.

Lewis Carroll has been called "the king of neologistic poems" because of his poem, "Jabberwocky", which incorporated dozens of invented words. The early modern English prose writings of Sir Thomas Browne are the source of many neologisms as recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary.

The children's book Frindle by Andrew Clements is a story about a neologism.

Neologisms List[link]

Science[link]

Words or phrases created to describe new scientific hypotheses, discoveries, or inventions include,

• x-ray, or röntgenograph (November 8, 1895, by Röntgen)
• radar (1941) from Radio Detection And Ranging
• laser (1960) from Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation
• blackhole (1968)
• meme (1976)
• prion (1982)
• beetle bank (early 1990s)
• grep (1970s)
• lidar (late 90s) from Light Detection And Ranging
• Internet (1974)
• translational research (early 1990s)
• Taser (1980's) from Thomas A Swift Electric Rifle

Science fiction[link]

Concepts created to describe new, futuristic ideas include,

• beaming (1931)
• hyperspace (1934)
• robotics (1941)
• waldo (1942)
• Dyson sphere (circa 1960)
• ansible (1966)
• phaser (1966)
• warp speed (1966)
• ringworld (1971)
• lightsaber (1977)
• replicant (1982)
• cyberspace (1984)
• xenocide (1991)
• metaverse (1992)
• alien space bats (1998)
• teleojuxtaposition (2003)

Literature more generally[link]

See "Neologisms in literature" topic below.

Politics[link]

See also Category:Political neologisms

Words or phrases created to make some kind of political or rhetorical point, sometimes perhaps with an eye to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis include,

• carpetbagging (19th century)
• Gerrymandering (1812)
• genocide (1943)
• Dixiecrat (1948)
• meritocracy (1958)
• pro-life (1961)
• homophobia (1969)
• political correctness (1970)
• Californication (1970s)
• pro-choice (1975)
• heterosexism (1979)
• glocalisation (1980s)
• sie and hir (pronouns) (1981)
• Republicrat (1985)
• astroturfing (1986)
• dog-whistle politics (1990)
• Islamophobia (1991)
• soccer mom (1992)
• fauxtography (1996)^[7]
• red state/blue state/swing state (c. 2000)
• corporatocracy (2000s)
• Islamofascism (2001)
• Chindia (2004)
• NASCAR dad (2004)
• datagogy
• Saddlebacking (2009)
• Corporacracy (2001)^[8]

Corporate branding[link]

Words coined to name or re-brand corporations and signifying new meaning include,

• Accenture (2001), derived from 'Accent on the future'
• Acette (2002), derived from ‘ace’, meaning expertise, and the encapsulating suffix ‘ette’; when read together as aye~set signifying ‘expertise encapsulated’.
• Protiviti (2002), derived from professionalism and proactivity as well as independence and integrity.

Design[link]

Words created to describe new kinds of objects and concepts originating in various types of design include,

• Bauhaus (early 20th century)
• blobject (1990s)
• fabject (2004), a fabricated 3-D object^[9]

Popular culture[link]

Words or phrases evolved from mass media content or used to describe popular cultural phenomena (these may be considered a variety of slang as well as neologisms) include,

• moin (early 20th century)
• prequel (1958)
• jumping the shark (late 1970s)
• posterized (c. 1980s) ("posterize" also has existed for some time as a term for an image-editing technique; its neologistic sports usage is completely unrelated)
• queercore (mid 1980s)
• plus-size (1990s)
• blog (late 1990s)
• hard-target search (1993) - first used in the movie "The Fugitive"^{[citation needed]}
• chav (early 2000s)
• webinar (early 2000s)
• wardrobe malfunction (2004)
• truthiness (2005) (already existed as an obscure word previously recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary, but its 2005 usage on the Colbert Report was a neologistic one, with a new definition)
• fauxhawk (late 1990s)
• Brangelina (2005) - used to refer to supercouple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
• Tebowing (2011) - description of a prayerful victory stance derived from NFL quarterback Tim Tebow
• From "d'oh" to "cromulent" - many culturally-significant phrases from The Simpsons (1989–) are now in common use

Commerce and advertising[link]

Genericised trademarks include,

• aspirin
• hoover
• laundromat
• band-aid
• kleenex
• frisbee

Linguistics[link]

Words or phrases created to describe new language constructs include,

• retronym (popularized in 1980)
• backronym (1983)
• aptronym (2003; popularized by Franklin Pierce Adams)
• snowclone (2004)
• xerox
• googling
• photoshopping
• protologism (2005)

Other[link]

Miscellaneous sources include,

• nonce words—are words coined and used only for a particular occasion, usually for a special literary effect.

See also[link]

• Archaism
• Aureation
• Language planning
• Retronym
• Syllabic abbreviations
• Word formation
• Stunt word

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Look up neologism or protologism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

General information

• Root knowledge : The need for neologisms
• Neologism History & Evaluation
• International Dictionary of Literary Terms : Neologisms
• The Urban Dictionary
• Langmaker.com, a regularly updated directory of over 1,100 invented languages and neographies.

Indices

• Neologisms in Journalistic Text
• Internet Neologisms^{[dead link]}
• Rice University Neologisms Database
• Neologisms from the Internet - with Esther Dyson, Jimmy Wales and more...

Dan Savage
Dan Savage in 2005
Born	Daniel Keenan Savage (1964-10-07) October 7, 1964 (age 47) Chicago, Illinois
Other names	Keenan Hollahan
Education	B.A., Theater, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign[1]
Occupation	Author, media pundit, journalist, newspaper editor and sex advice columnist
Spouse	Terry Miller
Children	D.J.

Daniel Keenan "Dan" Savage (born October 7, 1964)^[2] is an American author, media pundit, journalist and newspaper editor.^[3][4] Savage writes the internationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column Savage Love. Its tone is frank in its discussion of sexuality, often humorous, and hostile to social conservatives and Rick Santorum's views on homosexuality. Savage has clashed with cultural conservatives on the right, and the gay establishment, on the left. He has also worked as a theater director, both under his real name and under the name Keenan Hollahan, using his middle name and his grandmother's maiden name.^[5] In 2010, Savage and his husband Terry Miller began the It Gets Better Project to help prevent suicide among LGBT youth.

Personal life[link]

Dan Savage was born to William and Judy Savage in Chicago, Illinois.^[6] He is of Irish ancestry.^[7] The third of four children,^[6] Savage was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary North, which he has described as "a Catholic high school in Chicago for boys thinking of becoming priests."^[8] Though Savage has stated that he is now "a wishy-washy agnostic" and an atheist,^[9] he has said that he still considers himself "culturally Catholic."^[8][10]

Savage attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied theater and history.^[6] As a theater director, Savage (working under the name "Keenan Hollahan") was a founder of Seattle's Greek Active Theater.^[10] Much of the group's work has been queer recontextualizations of classic works, such as a tragicomic Macbeth with both the title character and Lady Macbeth played by performers of the opposite sex. In March 2001, he directed his own Egguus at Consolidated Works, a parody of Peter Shaffer's 1973 play Equus which exchanged a fixation on horses for a fixation on chickens. Savage has not directed, produced, or performed in any productions since a 2003 production of Letters from the Earth, also at Consolidated Works, his trimmed version of Mark Twain's The Diary of Adam and Eve, which received scathing reviews, including one from his own paper, "My Boss's Show Stinks".^[11]

Savage and his husband, Terry, have one adopted son, D.J.,^[12] and were married in Vancouver, BC in 2005.^[13][14]

Savage Love[link]

In 1991, Savage was living in Madison, Wisconsin, and working as a manager at a local video store that specialized in independent film titles.^[6] There, Savage befriended Tim Keck, co-founder of The Onion, who announced that he was moving to Seattle to help start an alternative weekly newspaper titled The Stranger.^[6] Savage "made the offhand comment that forever altered [his] life: 'Make sure your paper has an advice column—everybody claims to hate 'em, but everybody seems to read 'em'."^[15] Savage typed up a sample column, and to Savage's surprise Keck offered him the job.^[16][17]

Savage stated in a February 2006 interview in The Onion's A.V. Club (which publishes his column) that he began the column with the express purpose of providing mocking advice to heterosexuals, since most straight advice columnists were "clueless" when responding to letters from gay people.^[16] Savage wanted to call the column "Hey Faggot!" in an effort to reclaim a hate word. His editors at the time refused his choice of column name, but for the first several years of the column, he attached "Hey Faggot!" at the beginning of each printed letter as a salutation."^[18] In his February 25, 1999 column, Savage announced that he was retiring the phrase, claiming that the reclamation was successful.^[18]

He has written in a number of columns about "straight rights" concerns, such as the HPV vaccine and the morning-after pill, stating in his November 9, 2005, column that "[t]he right-wingers and the fundies and the sex-phobes don't just have it in for the queers. They're coming for your asses too."

Media appearances[link]

Dan Savage speaking at Illinois Wesleyan University, 2007

In addition to maintaining his weekly column and authoring four books, Savage has been involved in several other projects.

From 1994 until 1997, he had a weekly three-hour call-in show called Savage Love Live on Seattle's KCMU (now KEXP). From 1998 to 2000, he ran the biweekly advice column Dear Dan on the news website abcnews.com.

He is now the editorial director of the weekly Seattle newspaper The Stranger, a promotion from his former position as The Stranger's editor-in-chief.^[19] Savage currently stars in Savage U on MTV, contributes frequently to This American Life and Out magazine, and acts as a "Real Time Real Reporter" on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. He has also made multiple appearances on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 discussing LGBT political issues such as same-sex marriage and Don't Ask Don't Tell.

Podcast[link]

The Savage Lovecast is a weekly audio podcast based on Savage's column Savage Love, available via iTunes and at the Stranger's website for free download. It features Savage doing a call-in version of his sex advice column. It is routinely rated as the top podcast in the iTunes "Health" category.^[20]

Opinions and points of view[link]

It Gets Better Project[link]

Dan Savage speaking at Google about the It Gets Better Project

On September 21, 2010, Savage started the It Gets Better Project in light of the suicide of 15-year-old Billy Lucas, who was bullied for his perceived sexual orientation. The project encourages adults, both LGBT and otherwise, to submit videos assuring gay teenagers that life can improve after bullying in early life.^[21] As of January 3, 2011, the project had over 5,000 user created testimonials.^[22]

Political advocacy[link]

Dan Savage at the 5th Avenue High School Musical Theatre Awards, 2006

Savage has written about his interest in political matters. His political leanings are primarily liberal, with pronounced contrarian and libertarian streaks.^[23] For example, he wrote that in 2000, suffering from the flu while on an assignment for salon.com to cover the Iowa caucuses,^[24] he was so angered by televised remarks in opposition to same-sex marriage by conservative Republican presidential hopeful Gary Bauer that he abandoned his original plan "to follow one of the loopy conservative Christian candidates around — Bauer or Alan Keyes — and write something insightful and humanizing about him, his campaign, and his supporters."^[25] Instead, he volunteered for the Bauer campaign with the intent to infect the candidate with his flu. He wrote that he licked doorknobs and other objects in the campaign office, and handed Bauer a saliva-coated pen, hoping to pass the virus on to Bauer and his supporters (though he later said that much of the article had been fictitious). He also registered and participated in the caucus, which was illegal, as Savage was not an Iowa resident. He was charged and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of fraudulent voting in a caucus, and was sentenced to a year's probation, 50 hours of community service, and a $750 fine.^{[26][27][28][29]}

Savage frequently mentions political issues in his column, particularly issues that affect family planning, birth control, and sexuality. He often encourages readers to get involved and/or voice a positive or negative opinion about a politician or public official.

After Rick Santorum, then a United States senator from Pennsylvania, made comments to a reporter comparing homosexual sex to bestiality and incest in 2003, Savage assailed Santorum in his column. Later, he sponsored a contest that led to the term santorum being used to refer to "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes a byproduct of anal sex".^[30] Savage set up a website to spread the definition.^[31] In 2010, Savage offered to remove his website if Rick Santorum would agree to donate US$5 million to a gay rights group.^[32][33] The organization, Freedom to Marry, advocates on behalf of same-sex marriage in the United States.^[33][34] Savage told Mother Jones in 2010, "If Rick Santorum wants to make a $5 million donation to [the gay marriage group] Freedom to Marry, I will take it down. Interest starts accruing now."^[35] Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, responded in a statement to Metro Weekly: "Support for Freedom to Marry's national campaign would be welcome—and a good way for Rick Santorum to start cleaning up the discriminatory mess he and his companions have made."^[36]

Savage continued the tradition in 2009 by having his readers vote to define saddlebacking as "the phenomenon of Christian teens engaging in unprotected anal sex in order to preserve their virginities",^[37] as a protest against the vocal support given to California Proposition 8 by Rick Warren (pastor of Saddleback Church), and President Barack Obama's invitation to Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. When Savage vowed to boycott Utah due to strong Mormon support for Proposition 8 ("Fuck you, Utah – we’re going to big, blue Colorado"), the Salt Lake City Weekly dropped Savage's column: "all Utahns aren’t to blame."^[38]

Savage strongly supported the war in Iraq in the pages of The Stranger in October 2002.^[39] By the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003, however, he had somewhat softened his argument.^[40]

Savage has also been a vocal opponent of state legislation proscribing the sale of sex toys. After an exposé by Kandiss Crone from WLBT (Jackson, Mississippi) precipitated the arrest and fining of an adult video store owner, Savage suggested that readers send any sex toys that they needed to dispose of to Crone.^[41][42]

Personal opinions[link]

Dan Savage discussing sex education with his brother, Northwestern University Senior Lecturer in English, Bill Savage (2010)

• Savage initially supported the Iraq war and advocated military action against other Middle Eastern states, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, saying, "Islamo-fascism is a regional problem, like European fascism – and the Middle East [has] to be remade just as Europe was remade." One week before the war began, Savage spoke against it, citing the inability of President George W. Bush to form a convincing case and sway the UN and NATO allies.^[40] By 2005 he deemed the situation "hopeless" and advocated an immediate troop withdrawal.^[43]
• He describes his view toward family as "conservative", and his husband, Terry Miller, is a "stay-at-home dad" for the couple's adopted son. He has, however, expressed skepticism of "simplistic" views of monogamy.^[44]
• In response to a letter asking "Is the AIDS crisis over?" Savage, in his October 22, 1997 column, answered simply, "Yes." Several weeks of columns were devoted in whole or in part to discussion of the issue.^[45][46]
• He opposes the tactics of the War on Drugs, and opposes the prohibition of certain controlled substances.^[47]

Views on outing[link]

Savage stated in a column that he favors outing in some cases, specifically mentioning anti-gay activist Tyler Whitney. However, in the same column he noted that "I recently talked someone out of outing a public figure. A Savage Love reader was contemplating outing an innocuous celebrity back in April. I advised him against it because, as I wrote to him privately, outing is brutal and it should be reserved for brutes."^[48]

Local issues[link]

Savage's editorship of The Stranger has established him as a voice in local Seattle politics. His most high-profile commentary has been as an outspoken critic of the Teen Dance Ordinance and other crackdowns on all-ages events.

Savage argues that closing down supervised all-ages dance venues drives teens to boredom and reckless activities: "Places like Ground Zero and the Kirkland Teen Center are invaluable from a law enforcement point of view. They keep kids out of, say, 7-Eleven parking lots or the homes of friends whose parents are away."^[49]

Controversies[link]

In a 2006 interview with the Daily Pennsylvanian, Savage stated that then-Green Party Senate candidate Carl Romanelli, whom Savage claimed was partially funded by state Republicans for a spoiler effect against Democrat Bob Casey, "should be dragged behind a pickup truck until there's nothing left but the rope". In the same interview, he stated, "Mr. Romanelli should go fuck himself."^[50] Immediately after the interview, Savage wrote, "I regret using that truck metaphor, and didn't mean it literally, and it was in poor taste, and I regret it."^[51]

On HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher July 15, 2011, during a panel discussion of the debt limit increase negotiations between the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama, Savage said in a stand-alone remark, "I wish the Republicans were all fucking dead."^[52] He apologized for his remarks on his blog later the same night saying in part, "I don't feel that way. My dad is a Republican. (Well, he says he's an independent, but he hasn't voted for a Democrat since JFK. My dad is a Republican.)"^[53]

Savage has been glitter bombed three times, twice in 2011 and once in 2012, by protesters who alleged that Savage is transphobic, among other accusations.^{[54][55][56][57]} A 2012 Feminist Wire piece argued that the "... the popularity of the [It Gets Better] campaign and its legitimacy depend on the very subtle exclusion of non-white and non-bourgeois bodies".^[58]

Savage came under scrutiny for an April 13, 2012 speech encouraging high school students to, "learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people", prompting some students to leave the auditorium. Savage apologized on April 29 for calling the walkout "a pansy-assed move", saying, "I wasn't calling the handful of students who left pansies (2,800+ students, most of them Christian, stayed and listened), just the walkout itself." Savage stood by the central point of his speech.^[59][60][61]

Works[link]

In addition to his advice column, Savage has written four books, edited one book, and authored various op-ed pieces in The New York Times.

Awards[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Dan Savage

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Dan Savage

• Savage U – Savage's MTV show
• Savage Love – Savage's weekly sex advice column
  • Savage's podcasts
• It Gets Better Project
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Dan Savage at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Dan Savage in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Interview with Kittenpants.org