Coining or inventing words is a regular task for storytellers, and in certain genres plays an important part of world-building. Not every writer forges new words -- some are fine with using only words that already exist -- but word smithing can be fun and a great way to stretch both your vocabulary and your imagination.
When coining words for your fiction one of the easiest methods is to create compound words by joining together two small words to forge a new construct. Some examples of these that already exist in our language are copperhead, eyebrow, flowerpot, handbag, ladybug, sandstorm and windmill. When you create a compound word you should consider what the two words you're combining mean, how they relate to each other, and when combined what sort of imagery they invoke for your reader. Let's shuffle the example compound words I just gave you and see what new words we can invent:
copperbrow ~ eyebag ~ flowermill ~ handstorm ~ ladyhead ~ sandpot ~ windbug
Copperbrow made me think of a warrior wearing some sort of metal band or helm to protect his forehead or eyes. I imagine if a character doesn't get any sleep they'll acquire a huge matched set of eyebags. Flowermill invokes two ideas -- a village perfumery or a brothel that specializes either in catering to virgins or procuring them. An agitated translator for the deaf might indulge in a handstorm, while a garden of ladyhead plants might bloom with genteel elegance. An ancient fire extinguisher could be called a sandpot, and an exotic alien insect that lives its life entirely within the air currents above a planet (or another species of blustering, ineffective politician) should be named windbugs.
If compound words seem too obvious, you can meld them together more completely by joining them at shared prefixes or suffixes. For this you can play with Degraeve.com's Invent-a-Word generator, which recombines words that share common prefixes or suffixes. It also allows you to choose the specific number of letters to be shared by the recombined words. Here's part of a list I got when I fed "word" as a 3-letter shared prefix to the generator:
word + ordain = wordain
word + ordeal = wordeal
word + order = worder
word + orderly = worderly
word + ordinal = wordinal
word + ordinance = wordinance
word + ordinaries = wordinaries
word + ordinarily = wordinarily
word + ordinate = wordinate
word + ordination = wordination
The generator can also be useful in reverse melding two words with a common suffix; here's a partial list of "word" as a 1-letter shared suffix:
aglow + word = agloword
borrow + word = borroword
claw + word = claword
draw + word = draword
few + word = feword
flaw + word = flaword
flow + word = floword
gnaw + word = gnaword
hallow + word = halloword
harrow + word = harroword
law + word = laword
low + word = loword
pew + word = peword
pillow + word = pilloword
shadow + word = shadoword
shallow + word = shalloword
show + word = showord
tallow + word = talloword
thaw + word = thaword
threw + word = threword
wallow + word = walloword
whew + word = wheword
widow + word = widoword
Do you have any particular tricks or tools you use when coining words for your stories that you'd like to share? Let us know in comments.
Showing posts with label coining words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coining words. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Inventing Your Wordrobe
Recently I encountered three interesting, new-to-me words and word phrases: gender resistance (source: NPR), helicopter parenting (source: online article about bullying) and gynobibliophobia (source: Paul McFeries's Word Spy blog, while I was looking for a term to use for my post title.) I jotted down all three because they intrigued me, and I'm almost sure I'll use the first two in conversation if not fiction. As interesting as gynobibliophobia is, though, it sounds like a fear of gynecologists with books, or books with gynecologists, not the meaning it was given (a dislike of women writers.)
When you want to invent some new stuff for your wordrobe, you should always keep in mind that coined words must be comprehensible not only to you but anyone who reads them (and remember, you're probably not going to be there with the reader to explain things.) Wordnut Randy Parker blogs here about inventing an advertising term for a commercial client, and mentions how to do this: Most of the time, words coined in advertising are combinations of existing words or parts of words, so that the meanings are still understood. This is really the first law of word-coining for any field.
You may be hesitant to dive into adding new things to your wordrobe, but coining words becomes easier with practice, too. I found a simple random word generator with an option to choose the level of obscurity, and began generating nouns and combining them into words and phrases with my own definitions. In ten minutes I had put together these seven:
Fumetruth: the honesty we display when we are furious
Fuzzyshed: pilled bits that have come off an old sweater in the wash
Honesty Hell:: where we end up when we tell the truth a little too often
Inkclaim: a hand-written deed proving ownership of property on a fantasy world
Joydump: what a person who has had remarkable luck gives you in the process of informing you about it
Maze-Minded: someone whose thought processes are lengthy, convoluted and rarely provide results
Sigh Processor: someone who always tries to interpret the meaning behind the non-verbal sounds you make.
When you coin words for stories, look at your worldbuilding, your characterizations and details from your plot. These are all excellent sources of keywords and concepts, some of which will jump out at you when you're thinking about words to invent. Once you've made a list of the words that have the most appeal to you, start playing with them. Chop them up, recombine them and see what happens. I like fusing two words together to form a new/third meaning, but I'm also an anagram junkie.
What's in your wordrobe?
When you want to invent some new stuff for your wordrobe, you should always keep in mind that coined words must be comprehensible not only to you but anyone who reads them (and remember, you're probably not going to be there with the reader to explain things.) Wordnut Randy Parker blogs here about inventing an advertising term for a commercial client, and mentions how to do this: Most of the time, words coined in advertising are combinations of existing words or parts of words, so that the meanings are still understood. This is really the first law of word-coining for any field.
You may be hesitant to dive into adding new things to your wordrobe, but coining words becomes easier with practice, too. I found a simple random word generator with an option to choose the level of obscurity, and began generating nouns and combining them into words and phrases with my own definitions. In ten minutes I had put together these seven:
Fumetruth: the honesty we display when we are furious
Fuzzyshed: pilled bits that have come off an old sweater in the wash
Honesty Hell:: where we end up when we tell the truth a little too often
Inkclaim: a hand-written deed proving ownership of property on a fantasy world
Joydump: what a person who has had remarkable luck gives you in the process of informing you about it
Maze-Minded: someone whose thought processes are lengthy, convoluted and rarely provide results
Sigh Processor: someone who always tries to interpret the meaning behind the non-verbal sounds you make.
When you coin words for stories, look at your worldbuilding, your characterizations and details from your plot. These are all excellent sources of keywords and concepts, some of which will jump out at you when you're thinking about words to invent. Once you've made a list of the words that have the most appeal to you, start playing with them. Chop them up, recombine them and see what happens. I like fusing two words together to form a new/third meaning, but I'm also an anagram junkie.
What's in your wordrobe?
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Coining by Association
Jeroen Kessels' Word Generator creates artificial random words in your choice of seven languages. The helpful thing about this particular generator is that it produces words that look and even sound real (at least in English, Spanish and French; I'm assuming it does the same in the other available languages.)
It also gives you sixty words at once, which gives provides a nice selection to choose from versus the one-word generators out there. While I was playing with it, I started making a list of the artificial words that caught my eye:
ritabian
versompe
lortler
amesar
cablere
throtild
feury
verislor
thagic
inkmande
When your a kid and you don't know the definition of a word or phrase, often you'll make up one in your head. Until I reached high school I thought a socialist was just someone who was very old, fussy-friendly and went to church a lot. There was even some logic to that assumption: the monthly meeting my grandma went to was called a social, and at them she would hang with her friends and make calendars out of felt and sequins and beads to sell at rummage sales. Therfore a socialist had to be one of those crafty-type old people.
Fortunately I never called my rabidly independent. group-hating Grandma a socialist; she probably would have throttled me.
There are any number of techniques writers can use to coin words, but I like returning to that childlike mindset and building words out of bits and pieces of other words that have real or personal meaning through word association. It means letting go of logic and knowledge and instead running with your imagination, and once you get the hang of it can become a kind of game.
Let's look at that list again, and this time I'll also add what goes through my head as I'm looking at the word:
ritabian: rit = writ; something written; abian = Sabian = cymbal (this is what I get for hanging with musicians when I was younger) = symbol (soundalike word.) Ritabian could be something written that is also something symbolic, maybe a type of pictograph made of words.
versompe: vers = something elegant, i.e. Versace, Versailles, ver à soie (silkworm); sompe = sump, a reservoir inside the bottom of a machine. I don't think there is such a thing as an elegant sump, but the image that forms in my head in some kind of boudoir oubliette; an elegant trap.
lortler: It looks a lot like chortle (chuckle + snort = chortle) but the beginning L softens the word, so maybe a chortler who whispers.
amesar:: ame = amiable, friend; I definitely hear "Tsar" in the end of this word, which is to me a dual symbol of power and corruption, so a kind of benevolent tyrant who isn't too clean or too awful.
cablere: two sound-alike words popped into my head: caballaro and cabala; the -lere makes me think of an organization. A secret cowboy society, or someone who runs one.
throtild: throt = throttle; -ild = gild; a beautiful but tight adornment worn on the neck to downsize it, like a throat corset.
feury: this looks like a blend of fey + fury. Angry faeries.
verislor: veris = Latin ver = truth; lor = lore. Legends based on something that really happened, or that expose the truth of some event.
thagic: thermal + magic. Phoenix-type magic, fire-based that burns or backlashes on the practitioner in some fashion. Magic of last resort; magic of the masochist. Sorrowful magic.
inkmande: ink = ink; mande = mandatory = directive. Although it would probably make more sense to define this one as homework or something one is made to write, I'm thinking it's a kind of writing instrument. Not a pen, but something that functions like a pen that is also plain but beautiful to look at.
If you have trouble coining words, coming up with titles or otherwise using words as building blocks, this kind of game can help stretch your boundaries and teach you to see words not as someone else defines them, but as what they mean to you. Getting in touch with that part of yourself who is still a kid and wants to define the world on your terms is never a bad thing, either. It's the kind of exercise every imagination needs on a regular basis.
It also gives you sixty words at once, which gives provides a nice selection to choose from versus the one-word generators out there. While I was playing with it, I started making a list of the artificial words that caught my eye:
ritabian
versompe
lortler
amesar
cablere
throtild
feury
verislor
thagic
inkmande
When your a kid and you don't know the definition of a word or phrase, often you'll make up one in your head. Until I reached high school I thought a socialist was just someone who was very old, fussy-friendly and went to church a lot. There was even some logic to that assumption: the monthly meeting my grandma went to was called a social, and at them she would hang with her friends and make calendars out of felt and sequins and beads to sell at rummage sales. Therfore a socialist had to be one of those crafty-type old people.
Fortunately I never called my rabidly independent. group-hating Grandma a socialist; she probably would have throttled me.
There are any number of techniques writers can use to coin words, but I like returning to that childlike mindset and building words out of bits and pieces of other words that have real or personal meaning through word association. It means letting go of logic and knowledge and instead running with your imagination, and once you get the hang of it can become a kind of game.
Let's look at that list again, and this time I'll also add what goes through my head as I'm looking at the word:
ritabian: rit = writ; something written; abian = Sabian = cymbal (this is what I get for hanging with musicians when I was younger) = symbol (soundalike word.) Ritabian could be something written that is also something symbolic, maybe a type of pictograph made of words.
versompe: vers = something elegant, i.e. Versace, Versailles, ver à soie (silkworm); sompe = sump, a reservoir inside the bottom of a machine. I don't think there is such a thing as an elegant sump, but the image that forms in my head in some kind of boudoir oubliette; an elegant trap.
lortler: It looks a lot like chortle (chuckle + snort = chortle) but the beginning L softens the word, so maybe a chortler who whispers.
amesar:: ame = amiable, friend; I definitely hear "Tsar" in the end of this word, which is to me a dual symbol of power and corruption, so a kind of benevolent tyrant who isn't too clean or too awful.
cablere: two sound-alike words popped into my head: caballaro and cabala; the -lere makes me think of an organization. A secret cowboy society, or someone who runs one.
throtild: throt = throttle; -ild = gild; a beautiful but tight adornment worn on the neck to downsize it, like a throat corset.
feury: this looks like a blend of fey + fury. Angry faeries.
verislor: veris = Latin ver = truth; lor = lore. Legends based on something that really happened, or that expose the truth of some event.
thagic: thermal + magic. Phoenix-type magic, fire-based that burns or backlashes on the practitioner in some fashion. Magic of last resort; magic of the masochist. Sorrowful magic.
inkmande: ink = ink; mande = mandatory = directive. Although it would probably make more sense to define this one as homework or something one is made to write, I'm thinking it's a kind of writing instrument. Not a pen, but something that functions like a pen that is also plain but beautiful to look at.
If you have trouble coining words, coming up with titles or otherwise using words as building blocks, this kind of game can help stretch your boundaries and teach you to see words not as someone else defines them, but as what they mean to you. Getting in touch with that part of yourself who is still a kid and wants to define the world on your terms is never a bad thing, either. It's the kind of exercise every imagination needs on a regular basis.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Wordling Poetry
I've discovered a cool new trick to do with Wordle, my favorite online word cloud generator, that can help with titles, coined words and other phrases you might need for a story.
On Wordle's Create Page, paste in the text box a poem that you like and/or that somehow relates to your story and click go. In the cloud screen, set up the layout to be horizontal with rounder edges, and choose a non-fancy font option like the one I have below (Scheherazade.)
Here's what e.e. cummings's poem Somewhere I have never traveled looks like once I Wordle it (click on any word cloud to see larger version):
From the resulting word cloud, I can see the words of the poem aligned differently, and begin to pick out some eye-catching phrases, such as always roses (great title for a sweet romance, especially if roses are a key symbol in the story), small beyond (maybe there's something to the left of the great beyond), and voiceclose (how close is he? Voiceclose.)
If I don't see any phrases that I like in the resulting wordle, I can reshuffle all the words by clicking on layout and choosing the re-layout with the current settings option.
Here's another Wordled Poem, this time Shakespeare's Sonnet XXIX:
From this one pops phrases like outcast love (nothing like a leper for a boyfriend, eh?) trouble hymns (the sort you sing when the world isn't being especially kind), and hopegate (there's a new synonym for heart.)
One more, this time using Lines on the Mermaid Tavern by John Keats:
Lots of cool word phrases in this one: deadsign (you mystery writers should be able to take that one to the bank), fineglory (perfect description for baby blond hair), mermaid gone (that sounds like a fantasy speed of some kind -- she was out of there so fast she was mermaid gone), underneath souls (what is underneath the soul, anyway?), smack Paradise (instant image of an addict flophouse), winebold (he wasn't beercrazy, he was winebold.)
I didn't use poems that were especially lengthy or overly wordy to generate these clouds; the Shakespearean sonnet is only 14 lines. If you're not a fan of poetry, of course you can also use prose, letters, word lists or anything else you prefer (any imagery-rich text will probably give you a neat wordle to work with.)
On Wordle's Create Page, paste in the text box a poem that you like and/or that somehow relates to your story and click go. In the cloud screen, set up the layout to be horizontal with rounder edges, and choose a non-fancy font option like the one I have below (Scheherazade.)
Here's what e.e. cummings's poem Somewhere I have never traveled looks like once I Wordle it (click on any word cloud to see larger version):
From the resulting word cloud, I can see the words of the poem aligned differently, and begin to pick out some eye-catching phrases, such as always roses (great title for a sweet romance, especially if roses are a key symbol in the story), small beyond (maybe there's something to the left of the great beyond), and voiceclose (how close is he? Voiceclose.)
If I don't see any phrases that I like in the resulting wordle, I can reshuffle all the words by clicking on layout and choosing the re-layout with the current settings option.
Here's another Wordled Poem, this time Shakespeare's Sonnet XXIX:
From this one pops phrases like outcast love (nothing like a leper for a boyfriend, eh?) trouble hymns (the sort you sing when the world isn't being especially kind), and hopegate (there's a new synonym for heart.)
One more, this time using Lines on the Mermaid Tavern by John Keats:
Lots of cool word phrases in this one: deadsign (you mystery writers should be able to take that one to the bank), fineglory (perfect description for baby blond hair), mermaid gone (that sounds like a fantasy speed of some kind -- she was out of there so fast she was mermaid gone), underneath souls (what is underneath the soul, anyway?), smack Paradise (instant image of an addict flophouse), winebold (he wasn't beercrazy, he was winebold.)
I didn't use poems that were especially lengthy or overly wordy to generate these clouds; the Shakespearean sonnet is only 14 lines. If you're not a fan of poetry, of course you can also use prose, letters, word lists or anything else you prefer (any imagery-rich text will probably give you a neat wordle to work with.)
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