Inventing a word is not as cool as discovering an illness, or even a comet. You get your name attached to those. But it’s still pretty cool. A word starts as a spark in someone’s imagin… ...

In 1984, for example, a word that was then just 2 years old made it into Merriam-Webster’s when “AIDS” may have set a record for the shortest-ever time from coinage to dictionary.

John Milton gave us pandemonium, Lewis Carroll invented chortle, and astrophysicist Fred Hoyle came to regret coming up with big bang.But most people who attempt to coin words see failure, because ...

Inventing words was once thought pretentious. ... Dr. Seuss is one of the heroes of “The Hidden History of Coined Words,” in which Ralph Keyes—the author of more than a dozen books, ...

Quiz: Match The Word to Its Creator Are you a literary ninja? Prove it by acing this challenge based on Paul Dickson’s “Authorisms.” ...

Merriam-Webster tracks the words that enter our language. ... Every Word Coined the Year You Were Born. READER'S DIGEST, STOCK.ADOBE.COM (3) By Jo Ann Liguori. Updated on Jun. 27, 2025.

From 'tweet' to 'Chinese Firewall,' we are inundated with new terms from science, technology and the Web We tend to create new words to describe our changing world. WIRED magazine’s Jargon Watch ...

Our recent article on “coined words and catch phrases” in commercials got requests for a follow-up list of inventive “coinage” designed to make products and services being advertised stand ...