In linguistics, a protologism is a newly used or coined word, a nonce word, that has been repeated but not gained acceptance beyond its original users or been published independently of the coiners. [1] [2] The word may be proposed, may be extremely new, or may be established only within a very limited group of people. [3] [4] A protologism becomes a neologism as soon as it appears in published press, on a website, or in a book, independently of the coiner [5] —though, most definitively, in a dictionary. [6] A word whose developmental stage is between that of a protologism (freshly coined) and a neologism (a new word) is a prelogism. [7]
Protologisms constitute one stage in the development of neologisms. A protologism is coined to fill a gap in the language, with the hope of its becoming an accepted word. [8] [9] As an example, when the word protologism itself was coined—in 2003 [10] by the American literary theorist Mikhail Epstein—it was autological: an example of the thing it describes. [11]
About the concept and his name for it, Epstein wrote:
I suggest calling such brand new words 'protologisms' (from Greek protos, meaning 'first, original' and Greek logos, meaning 'word'; cf. prototype, protoplasm). The protologism is a freshly minted word not yet widely accepted. It is a verbal prototype, which may eventually be adopted for public service or remain a whim of linguo-poetic imagination. [12]
According to Epstein, every word in use started out as a protologism, subsequently became a neologism, and then gradually grew to be part of the language. [12]
There is no fixed rule determining when a protologism becomes a stable neologism, [13] and according to Kerry Maxwell, author of Brave New Words:
[A] protologism is unlikely to make the leap to neologism status unless society connects with the word or identifies a genuine need for it [...] there's no guarantee that simple exposure to these creations will be effective in getting them used, as discovered by British inventor Sir James Dyson when he fruitlessly attempted to promote a verb dyson (by analogy with hoover) in the early 2000s. [14]
A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically, which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc. It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.
A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge. In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word lexicon derives from Greek word λεξικόν, neuter of λεξικός meaning 'of or for words'.
Lexicology is the branch of linguistics that analyzes the lexicon of a specific language. A word is the smallest meaningful unit of a language that can stand on its own, and is made up of small components called morphemes and even smaller elements known as phonemes, or distinguishing sounds. Lexicology examines every feature of a word – including formation, spelling, origin, usage, and definition.
In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech is a category of words that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assigned to the same part of speech generally display similar syntactic behavior, sometimes similar morphological behavior in that they undergo inflection for similar properties and even similar semantic behavior. Commonly listed English parts of speech are noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, interjection, numeral, article, and determiner.
A loanword is a word at least partly assimilated from one language into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because they share an etymological origin; and calques, which involve translation. Loanwords from languages with different scripts are usually transliterated, but they are not translated. Additionally, loanwords may be adapted to the phonology, phonotactics, orthography, and morphology of the target language. When a loanword is fully adapted to the rules of the target language, it is distinguished from native words of the target language only by its origin. However, often the adaptation is incomplete, so loanwords may conserve specific features distinguishing them from native words of the target language: loaned phonemes and sound combinations, partial or total conserving of the original spelling, foreign plural or case forms or indeclinability.
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words begin, start, commence, and initiate are all synonyms of one another: they are synonymous. The standard test for synonymy is substitution: one form can be replaced by another in a sentence without changing its meaning. Words are considered synonymous in only one particular sense: for example, long and extended in the context long time or extended time are synonymous, but long cannot be used in the phrase extended family. Synonyms with exactly the same meaning share a seme or denotational sememe, whereas those with inexactly similar meanings share a broader denotational or connotational sememe and thus overlap within a semantic field. The former are sometimes called cognitive synonyms and the latter, near-synonyms, plesionyms or poecilonyms.
In linguistics, a neologism is any relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that nevertheless has achieved popular or institutional recognition, and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered a neologism once it is published in a dictionary. The most precise studies into language change and word formation, in fact, identify the process of a "neological continuum": a nonce word is any single-use term that may or may not grow in popularity; a protologism is such a term used exclusively within a small group; a prelogism is such a term that is gaining usage but still not mainstream; and a neologism has become accepted or recognized by linguistic institutions.
A pseudo-anglicism is a word in another language that is formed from English elements and may appear to be English, but that does not exist as an English word with the same meaning.
An anglicism is a word or construction borrowed from English by another language.
In linguistics, a nonce word—also called an occasionalism—is any word (lexeme), or any sequence of sounds or letters, created for a single occasion or utterance but not otherwise understood or recognized as a word within a given language. Nonce words have a variety of functions and are most commonly used for humor, poetry, children's literature, linguistic experiments, psychological studies, and medical diagnoses, or they arise by accident.
Etymology is the study of the origin and evolution of a word's semantic meaning across time, including its constituent morphemes and phonemes. It is a subfield of historical linguistics, and draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, semiotics, and phonetics.
In linguistics, conversion, also called zero derivation or null derivation, is a kind of word formation involving the creation of a word from an existing word without any change in form, which is to say, derivation using only zero. For example, the noun green in golf is derived ultimately from the adjective green.
Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with phonetically and semantically similar words or roots from the adopting language. Thus the approximate sound and meaning of the original expression in the source language are preserved, though the new expression in the target language may sound native.
A pseudoword is a unit of speech or text that appears to be an actual word in a certain language, while in fact it has no meaning. It is a specific type of nonce word, or even more narrowly a nonsense word, composed of a combination of phonemes which nevertheless conform to the language's phonotactic rules. It is thus a kind of vocable: utterable but meaningless.
In linguistics, a blend—sometimes known, perhaps more narrowly, as a blend word, lexical blend, portmanteau, or portmanteau word —is a word formed, usually intentionally, by combining the sounds and meanings of two or more other words together. English examples include smog, coined by blending smoke and fog, as well as motel, from motor (motorist) and hotel.
Estonian vocabulary, i.e., the vocabulary of the Estonian language, was influenced by many other language groups.
Nashism and Nashists are post-Soviet Russian political neologisms derived from the word "наши". The word is used to refer to various forms of worldview based on the primacy of "ours" over the "outsiders". Various Russian journalists, politicians and politologists put different meanings into this word, as described below. The words "nashists" and "nashism" have also been used in reference to the Nashi political movement with the word "ours" in its title.
Johannes Aavik was an Estonian philologist and Fennophile who played an influential role in the modernization and development of the Estonian language.
The lexical hypothesis is a thesis, current primarily in early personality psychology, and subsequently subsumed by many later efforts in that subfield. Despite some variation in its definition and application, the hypothesis is generally defined by two postulates. The first states that those personality characteristics that are important to a group of people will eventually become a part of that group's language. The second follows from the first, stating that more important personality characteristics are more likely to be encoded into language as a single word. With origins in the late 19th century, use of the lexical hypothesis began to flourish in English and German psychology in the early 20th century. The lexical hypothesis is a major foundation of the Big Five personality traits, the HEXACO model of personality structure and the 16PF Questionnaire and has been used to study the structure of personality traits in a number of cultural and linguistic settings.
protologism.
