Literary Lingo

Abstract

Writers who can’t come up with the right word to describe something seldom hesitate to create a new one. As a result some of our most useful terms have come from their pens and keyboards. Authors such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton lived in times when the English language was mushrooming, along with scientific and other discoveries. This invited them to fill gaps in the lexicon with words of their own creation. Charles Dickens was a prolific coiner of “Dickensisms,” some of which took their place in the vernacular (e.g., cheesiness, seediness, bodyguard, sawbones). Not just text but titles such as Psychobabble, Catch-22, The Last Hurrah, and The Rise of the Meritocracy were the source of words and phrases in common use today.