These authors are all geniuses just based on their works alone. When you consider they invented words within those novels that are now in our day-to-day vernacular… well, it’s enough to make a humble blogger feel a little inadequate.
1. “Bump” first appeared in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare coined a ridiculous number of words, actually, although some historians and linguists think certain words just get attributed to Shakespeare even if he didn’t really invent them.
2. “Runcible spoon” was created for The Owl and the Pussycat by author Edward Lear. He had no particular meaning for the word runcible – Lear also referred to “a runcible hat,” a “runcible cat,” a “runcible goose” and a “runcible wall.” But since it has entered somewhat common vernacular, “runcible spoon” sometimes refers to a grapefruit spoon, a spork, or a sort of flattened ladle (which is what it looks like in the illustration that accompanies the poem).
3. The same goes for the vorpal sword from Alice in Wonderland. Actually, Lewis Carroll is famous for his invented words. He doesn’t quite have as many under his belt as Mr. Shakespeare (if you can believe all of those), but other words that weren’t in our dictionaries until they were pulled out of his head include chortle, galumph and burble.
4. According to at least one source, Jane Austen invented the phrase “dinner party.”
5. If you have a Tween in your life, you can thank J.R.R. Tolkien that you have something to define them with. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien claimed a Tween was a Hobbit between the ages of 20 and 33 (33 being when Hobbits come of age). There’s some debate as to whether the word existed prior to this reference or not, however – the Oxford English Dictionary does not give him credit.
6. It’s long been believed the name “Wendy” didn’t exist until J.M. Barrie pulled it out of thin air for Peter Pan, however, it was definitely used as a nickname for “Gwendolyn” prior to Barrie’s tale about the boy who wouldn’t grow up. It’s safe to say that the name started to become quite popular and common post-Peter.
7. It may be hard to believe, but the word “quark” first appeared in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Scientist Murray Gell-Mann had been thinking about calling the unit “kwork,” but when he found the invented word in the Joyce classic, he knew he had discovered the spelling he wanted to use. Here’s what he had to say about it:
In 1963, when I assigned the name “quark” to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been ‘kwork’. Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word “quark” in the phrase “Three quarks for Muster Mark”. Since ‘quark’ (meaning, for one thing, the cry of the gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with ‘Mark’, as well as ‘bark’ and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as ‘kwork’. But the book represents the dream of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the “portmanteau” words in ‘Through the Looking-Glass’. From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry ‘Three quarks for Muster Mark’ might be ’Three quarts for Mister Mark’, in which case the pronunciation ‘kwork’ would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature.
8. “Nerd” may be a common insult (or term of endearment, depending on your tone, I suppose) these days, but before Dr. Seuss published it in 1950’s If I Ran the Zoo, people had to make do with “square” and “drip” instead. At least, they did according to Newsweek, which ran an article in 1951 defining the new slang term.
9. I bet if you think about “nymphet” long enough, you can come up with the book it came from. I’ll give you a second… lalala. OK, time’s up. It’s Nabokov’s Lolita of course. Here’s where it first appears in the book: “Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as ‘nymphets.’
10. I wouldn’t be writing this if cyberspace didn’t exist, so I guess in a roundabout way, I have sci-fi writer William Gibson to thank. I mean, sort of. He didn’t invent cyberspace itself, obviously, just the word for it. It first appeared in his novel Neuromancer in 1984.
Comments (24)
Comment
- subscribe /
- give a gift /
- terms of service /
- about /
- contact us /
- write for us /
- ad info /
- subscriber services /
- press /
- privacy policy /
- rss /
© 2012 Mental Floss Inc. All Rights Reserved. Mental Floss is a registered trademark owned by Felix Dennis. mentalfloss.com is a trademark owned by Felix Dennis.
Disclaimer: All submissions made to mental_floss become the property of Mental Floss Inc and may be used without further permission by the submitter and without compensation to the submitter. If you do not agree to these terms, please do not submit anything to mental_floss.
Wendy did exist prior to “Peter Pan”, and it was often a man’s name. Barrie certainly popularized it though. Google “Wendy name” and click on the first link to see a bit more etymology, and how Barrie came up with it. Cute, and a little sad.
posted by Eric on 3-24-2010 at 6:35 pm
I thought cyber anything traced back to the cybermen of Dr. Who.
reCaptcha: finds novels
posted by HansMoleman on 3-24-2010 at 6:39 pm
I particularly like Lewis Carroll’s definition of a portmanteau, which I suppose is just redefining rather than creating a term. But the first time I read Paradise Lost I refused to believe Milton had invented the word pandemonium. It makes sense, though…
posted by Liz on 3-24-2010 at 6:59 pm
Grok was first written by Robert Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land published in 1961. It is in common use today.
He also invented Tanstaafl which most consider an acronym but some consider a word.
posted by Gary on 3-24-2010 at 7:01 pm
I thought “Vorpal Sword” was from Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky?
posted by Casey on 3-24-2010 at 8:28 pm
“Quark” is of course a well-known German word (since the 14th century or thereabouts), denoting a type of curd cheese, and quite possibly Joyce was aware of this. (And it’s also popularly used as an exclamation, meaning “nonsense!”)
posted by Rainer Brockerhoff on 3-24-2010 at 8:56 pm
Isn’t Jonathan Swift given credit for “yahoo?” I remember something that prior to Gulliver’s Travels, it didn’t exist.
posted by Megan on 3-24-2010 at 9:21 pm
Speaking of Jane Austen, it’s always amused me immensely that it’s in one of her novels that we find the first printed mention of the game “base ball”.
posted by VM on 3-24-2010 at 9:52 pm
My English teacher said Edgar Allen Poe created the word “tintinnabulation” to describe the noise of bells ringing all at once. I thought it was a beautiful word.
posted by Tracie on 3-24-2010 at 10:11 pm
Well, technically the vorpal sword does come from Jabberwocky — but Jabberwocky is a story-within-a-story, a poem Alice reads in “Through the Looking Glass” (not “Alice in Wonderland”).
posted by Mark on 3-24-2010 at 11:14 pm
I know Shakespeare is credited with “atom”. It appears in Romeo and Juliet. (During Mercutio’s argument to sway Romeo to come party and forget what’s-her-name)
posted by okiemelissa on 3-24-2010 at 11:55 pm
Also, the word “pandemonium” was invented by Longfellow while translating Dante’s inferno.
posted by Dan on 3-25-2010 at 12:13 am
Joseph Heller also gave us Catch-22.
posted by David on 3-25-2010 at 12:53 am
On Number 3, was vorpal sword really referenced in Alice in Wonderland? The only reference I knew of this term was from his poem The Jabberwocky, but I have not memeorized every line of Alice in Wonderland, so perhaps it is referenced there as well…
posted by Ryan Smith on 3-25-2010 at 8:03 am
you could dedicate an entire page to words Vonnegut has coined. Surprised he’s not mentioned on this one.
posted by Joel on 3-25-2010 at 8:44 am
Not exactly “day-to-day” usage but in the Science Fiction world an “ansible” is any device that allows for faster then light communication. First coined by Ursula K. Le Guin in “Rocannon’s World”.
posted by Keith on 3-25-2010 at 8:49 am
What about “The ritual of rishathra, involving the act of sealing agreements between alien species through sex.”
posted by Rich on 3-25-2010 at 8:51 am
Should Heinlein also be credited for “grok?”
posted by Old Person on 3-25-2010 at 9:01 am
Let’s not forget the amazing J.K. Rowling! “Quidditch” will one day be a classic!
posted by Laura on 3-25-2010 at 10:07 am
Lewis Carroll also gave us the word “chortle,” did he not?
posted by Decam on 3-25-2010 at 12:28 pm
Yes, Decam, it’s stated in the article
posted by Yams on 3-25-2010 at 2:23 pm
Hmmm.
Jerry Pournelle & Larry Niven:
The gripping hand.
As in: left hand, right hand and gripping hand.
A logic that involves threes.
posted by memomachine on 4-5-2010 at 12:46 am
“Teleportation” was coined in 1921 by Charles Fort in his book “Lo!”, but he presented it as a natural process (accounting for mysterious disappearances, rains of frogs, etc.) rather than a psychic or technological trick.
posted by Golem14 on 4-5-2010 at 8:03 am
The word “robot” was coined by a writer whose name I forget, and “robotics” was coined by Asimov (“the laws of robotics”).
posted by booyah on 4-14-2010 at 3:13 pm