Book review: Authorisms, by Paul Dickson
For language fanciers it is a potentially vertiginous thought that every single word must once have been coined by an individual. Even the most familiar lexemes - say, "mud" or "pants" - were once inspired novelties.
by Paul Dickson
Bloomsbury
3 stars
Steven Poole
For language fanciers it is a potentially vertiginous thought that every single word must once have been coined by an individual. Even the most familiar lexemes - say, "mud" or "pants" - were once inspired novelties.
A compilation of all coinages would be a dictionary. And the vast majority of coiners are unknown to lexicographical history. So Paul Dickson has narrowed the field to coinages by authors.
Writers have a special relationship with language - it is both their tool and their enemy - so to impose oneself forcibly on it in this way may please the authorial ego. Dickson admits wanly that of the "more than 50" attempts at coinage he has made in books and articles, most have failed and belong in the sad category of "nonce words", invented usages that never took off.
What should actually count as a coinage? It surely requires no great stretch of wordy imagineering to adjectivify an existing noun. In general, Dickson notes correctly, the first printed example so far found of any word is rarely absolute proof of coinage, especially since a lot of words begin life in common talk.
Many joke coinages are here, too, though almost all remain noncey.