Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
| Domain | Definition |
Tips from 1870 | A word should not be condemned because it is new. If it is really needed it will be welcomed, and soon find a permanent place. Shakespeare, Addison, and Johnson introduced many new words, to which their names afterward gave a sanction. Carlyle, Coleridge, Tennyson, and Browning have introduced or given currency to new words, and made strange ones familiar. New words are objectionable when they are employed without proper authority. The chief sources of supply of the objectionable kind are the current slang of the street and the sensational newspaper. They are often the result of a desire to say things in such a manner as to reflect smartness upon the speaker, or to present things in a humorous or picturesque way. That they are frequently very effective cannot be gainsaid. Sometimes they are coined in the heat of political or social discussion, and, for a time, express what everybody is talking about; but it is impossible to tell whether they will live beyond the occasion that produced them. So long as their usage is doubtful it is safer not to employ them. Source: Slips of Speech. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
Crosswords: NEW WORDS |
| English words defined with "NEW WORDS": coiner ♦ derivation ♦ Neological, neologist, Neologize, Neoterize. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "NEW WORDS": lexicographer ♦ PURITY. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Author | Quotation |
Alexis De Tocqueville | The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express. |
Thomas Jefferson | The new circumstances under which we are placed call for new words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Lexicography | Devil's Dictionary | LEXICOGRAPHER, n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods. For your lexicographer, having written his dictionary, comes to be considered "as one having authority," whereas his function is only to make a record, not to give a law. The natural servility of the human understanding having invested him with judicial power, surrenders its right of reason and submits itself to a chronicle as if it were a statue. Let the dictionary (for example) mark a good word as "obsolete" or "obsolescent" and few men thereafter venture to use it, whatever their need of it and however desirable its restoration to favor -- whereby the process of improverishment is accelerated and speech decays. On the contrary, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense, has no following and is tartly reminded that "it isn't in the dictionary" -- although down to the time of the first lexicographer (Heaven forgive him!) no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary. In the golden prime and high noon of English speech; when from the lips of the great Elizabethans fell words that made their own meaning and carried it in their very sound; when a Shakespeare and a Bacon were possible, and the language now rapidly perishing at one end and slowly renewed at the other was in vigorous growth and hardy preservation -- sweeter than honey and stronger than a lion -- the lexicographer was a person unknown, the dictionary a creation which his Creator had not created him to create. God said: "Let Spirit perish into Form," And lexicographers arose, a swarm! Thought fled and left her clothing, which they took, And catalogued each garment in a book. Now, from her leafy covert when she cries: "Give me my clothes and I'll return," they rise And scan the list, and say without compassion: "Excuse us -- they are mostly out of fashion." Sigismund Smith |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
added dictionary new words | 6 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "d-e-n-o-r-s-w-w" | |
-1 letter: downers, wonders. | |
-2 letters: dowers, downer, dowser, drones, drowns, drowse, endows, owners, redons, resown, rowens, snored, snowed, sonder, sorned, wonder, worsen, wowser. | |
-3 letters: doers, doser, dower, downs, dowse, drone, drown, endow, enows, nerds, nodes, nosed, owned, owner, owsen, redon, redos, rends, resod, resow, rewon, rosed, rowed, rowen, senor, serow, snore, sonde, sowed, sower, sword. | |
| Words containing the letters "d-e-n-o-r-s-w-w" | |
+3 letters: downtowners, windflowers, wonderworks, woodenwares. | |
+4 letters: downwardness. | |
+5 letters: northwestward. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)4E 45 57 57 4F 52 44 53 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
|
Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01001110 01000101 01010111 00100000 01010111 01001111 01010010 01000100 01010011 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)N E W   W O R D S |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)004E 0045 0057 0057 004F 0052 0044 0053 |
Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)48395725749523853 |
| 1. Crosswords 2. Usage: Commercial 3. Quotations: Familiar 4. Quotations: Non-fiction | 5. Expressions: Internet 6. Anagrams 7. Orthography 8. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
