Van Winkle Words

Abstract

Many coined words lie dormant for a time, a long time even, then – like Rip Van Winkle – re-appear when needed. Such “Van Winkle words” include serendipity, which languished for nearly two centuries after being coined by Horace Walpole in 1754, before twentieth-century developments in science and technology needed that word to describe discoveries-by-chance. Changing circumstances are the alarm clock of slumbering words, waking them up as demand for such terminology mounts: greenhouse effect, vegan, groupthink. Slangy terms such as cool, chill, hip and vibe that sound so contemporary routinely turn out to have a long historical provenance. So do muggle, hobbit, and grit. Once these terms do reappear, they are typically thought to have been coined recently. This exemplifies what linguist Arnold Zwicky calls the recency illusion, “the belief that things YOU have noticed only recently are in fact recent.”