How words are born

The word neologism is built on the Greek adjective néos ("new") and the noun lógos ("word, expression"). These are new words that, like a kind of earthquake, suddenly shake the world of dictionaries, turning the noses of the most purist linguists.

The French form néologisme is first documented in 1734, within L'Encyclopédie, and is defined as follows:

"the predilection of some people to the use of expressions that are new and different from those allowed by usage. [...] Neologism consists not only in the introduction of useless new words into the language, but also in turns of phrase, and in the daring juxtaposition of terms and the strangeness of the images evoked by the neologism."

Why neologisms are born

Apparently, then, neologisms were (and are) not looked upon favorably, appearing as a kind of transgression, an insignificant activity.

Yet, at a given time, the word neologism was itself a neologism, and the reason is obvious: human beings need new words to describe new realities. Neologism opens the doors of language (and society) on the world to come. First, then, neologism responds to the need to describe social and cultural phenomena and changes, to name a new technology or concept.

Pierre Larousse regarded his dictionary as a daguerreotype capable of immortalizing the language and direction society was taking. In addition to its descriptive capacity, in fact, neologisms are a snapshot of the vibrancy of a language and its speakers.

Every year we await the release of new editions of the most authoritative vocabularies, just to understand where our language and society are going.

To cite just one example, over 500 new words appear in the 2022 edition of the Devoto-Oli monolingual vocabulary, demonstrating how dynamic and creative languages are.

How words are born

We generally speak of forestierisms (or borrowings) in the case of words that come from foreign languages, and of neologisms for those derived from other terms already present in a given language. Yet, very often borrowings are included among neologisms.

Neologisms are said to be "lexical" when they involve the inclusion of an actual new word in the vocabulary. Among these neologisms, "combinators" are said to be those whose creative process combines elements of the language according to the typical rules of word formation (affixation, composition). On the other hand, "semantic" neologisms are called neologisms that consist of giving a new meaning to a term already in use (such as for the Italian surfing the Internet or the snail for the symbol \@). Modisms are said to be neologisms of transient duration.

Neologisms are sometimes created by merging existing words (syncratic neologism) or by adding new suffixes and prefixes (the word lot, for example, was created from lot + the suffix -izzare).

Another possibility for creating neologisms is the so-called tamponing of words. Under this term, acronymy, which consists of cutting and merging words together, are included: an example is eliport, from helicopter and airport, and the words macedonia, which are derived from multiple units: automobile+ railway+ transportation = auto-railway.

Neologisms can arise by translating a word from a foreign language. For example, the word compersion is a translation of the English word compersion, which denotes the opposite of jealousy, that is, the pleasure a person feels when their partner is with someone else.

A new word can also be born by adapting a foreign word. For example, the word adultescent (adult person who behaves in a youthful manner) is an adaptation from the English adultescent, derived from adult and adolescent.

The so-called volgarization of a corporate brand is also a phenomenon capable of generating neologisms. When people talk about a paper towel, they are not necessarily referring to a piece of paper towel of that brand, because the word now loosely denotes any kind of kitchen paper. In linguistics these words are called "eponyms," or generic names derived from a person’s name. For example, Disneyland or Sacher cake are eponyms in that they are derived from the names of two people: walt Disney and Franz Sacher, respectively.

Neologisms are widespread in technical and technological fields. In particular, new terms are frequently coined to name inventions associated with the information technology revolution we have been experiencing for more than three decades. Just think of the irruption into our language of words like blog, e-mail, crack, chat, hack, spam, bug, patch, log, avatar, plug-in, pop-up, tag, ban, link, and you name it.

In addition to the technology sector, in marketing we also see the constant invention of words, more specifically through the phenomenon of naming, the activity of choosing the most suitable name for a brand, product/service following a careful analysis of them, their characteristics, the target market and the target audience being addressed. The naming thus contributes to the definition of identity and positioning.

• IKEA per esempio è un acronimo che combina le iniziali del suo fondatore, Ingvard Kamprad, con quelle dei luoghi della sua infanzia: the farm (Elmtaryd) and the name of the village (Agunnaryd) where he grew up.

• Kodak is meaningless, and its founder, Eastman, said he chose the name because it was short, easy to pronounce and meaningless. However, it is interesting to note how onomatopoeic the name is: indeed, it is reminiscent of the sound of a photographic shot.

• Another successful example is that of Sony. The historic technology company was inspired by two words: sonus, sound in Latin, but also to sonny, which in narrow English means bright young man, Just to emphasize the freshness and innovative nature of the brand.

The "petalous" case_studies_page

It was February 2016, and in an elementary school in Copparo, a small town in the province of Ferrara in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, an elementary school teacher, Margherita, assigned her third-grade students a grammar assignment: associating two adjectives with a noun. One of the students, Matthew, will say that the flower is fragrant and petalous, that is, full of petals.

The teacher, of course, considers this a mistake (and it is), since the adjective petaloso does not exist in Italian. Nevertheless, he offers a lesson on neologisms and how they officially become part of a language’s vocabulary. However, the story does not end this way.

Teacher Margaret contacts the Accademia della Crusca to receive a response on the matter. The Crusca responded, and from there began a chain of shares and publications on social media (and in various newspapers) that spread the fame of this neologism or, at least, the story that preceded it. Among those interested in the issue was Vera Gheno, a sociolinguist who ran the Twitter account of the Accademia della Crusca at the time. After sharing the story on Crusca’s Twitter profile, users fell in love with petalous.

Subscriptions to the Crusca’s social channels soared and the hashtag #petalous ended up at the top of the trending topics. In short, it was an incredible success.

The creation mechanism behind the word petalous is correct and is, as we have seen, one of many we use to create neologisms. In fact, the suffix -oso in Italian has the meaning of "full of." For example, anguished comes from anguish + -oso/-osa and means "full of anguish." Therefore, technically the headword was correct, but it could not be considered as acceptable because to be officially recorded in the vocabulary of a language a word must meet two basic conditions:

1. needs to be used by a large number of people;
2. must be used not only to talk about the word itself, but with the meaning it is intended to spread; petalous that is, it was to be used to express the concept of "full of petals."

At present, the adjective, while regarded as "well-formed" by the Accademia della Crusca, has not (yet) entered vocabularies. In any case, as Vera Gheno herself states, the "petalous" phenomenon leaves us with two fundamental lessons:

1. neologisms, like all novelties, trigger the battle between opponents and supporters;
2. fake news is always lurking. A well-known Italian politician, in fact, for marketing purposes, in reference to Expo 2016, in Milan, spoke of "petalous" projects. He told the story of little Matteo and concluded that the Crusca had included the word in the Italian vocabulary. Doubly false: the word had not been included in any vocabulary (nor has it been now), and more importantly, the inclusion of new words in the vocabulary is certainly not the responsibility of the Crusca.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if words are the fundamental unit of a language, neologisms can be considered the building block with which speakers try to describe new realities and concepts, without supplanting existing words, but filling a semantic gap, or simply to shape their own creativity.

Neologisms also often trigger heated debates about their grammatical correctness or need for existence because, just like all novelties, they tend to divide the communities that create them.