Neologizing 101

If you've ever heard yourself saying, ''He was, I don't know, squidgeral ,'' or thought, ''I wish there were a word for 'needing more than two hands to operate,''' you are probably a closet neologist. Neologizing, the practice of coining new words, may seem to be an arcane, specialized activity, but it's everywhere -- and the skillful employment of neologism is what gives English much of its verve. Each word in English had to start with a person trying to express a thought. For most words, the neologizer (or neologizers -- new words, like teenage trends or the calculus, are likely to pop up at the same time in very different places) is anonymous, although there are some exceptions. The humorist Gelett Burgess coined the word blurb in 1907. Yester-year , which sounds ancient, was in fact coined in 1870 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who wanted to translate a French word for which he couldn't find a suitable English equivalent. Paul Lewis, a professor of English at Boston College, invented the word Frankenfood (''genetically modified food'') in a letter to The Times in 1992. New words are being invented every day, and some of them even make it into the dictionary.
Although English has no committee or academy or board that reviews new words for suitability, there are a few loose guidelines that will help you become a successful neologist.

The most important rule is unwritten but not unspoken. It is the rule of pronounceability. Sure, xzyqt looks grand, but how do you say it? If Pat Sajak has taught us anything, it is this: be sure to buy enough vowels. If the pronunciation doesn't come trippingly off your tongue, move unfriendly tongue-twister consonants farther apart. English is pretty forgiving of the ''uh'' sound (often called schwa ) and can insert it almost anywhere. Can't say dreklistic easily? Try drekilistic .

Avoid spellings that have too many possible sounds. Consider mallough : is it ''maloo'' or ''maluff''? No one likes a silent letter, even when deployed for humorous or allusive reasons. (Old joke. Q: How do you pronounce Hen3ry? A: HEN-ree. The ''3'' is silent.) If your word is too difficult to spell, people will avoid it out of fear or irritation. Tied in with spelling is the ease of writing. Internal punctuation (like ca!met or we?zem ) is a nearly insurmountable obstacle as well as a pronunciation problem. Unless you are a major pop star (or even if), don't invent your own alphabetic characters. Very few people will want to add a new character to their fonts just for your word.

You don't have to build your word from scratch; there are many lists of word parts (roots and affixes) available on the Internet and in bookstores (thank SAT prep for that). Either choose your meaning and look for parts or choose your parts and look for meaning. If you're dying to have a new word that means ''overly eager to speak'' you might look for roots acer (''fierce, eager'') and dict- (''speak'') and then add a suffix that makes adjectives, like -ous , to get acerdictous . (Take care that your suffixes correspond to the part of speech you want. Acerdictous doesn't look like a noun, so it would be odd in a sentence like ''I saw a purple acerdictous today.'' It's much better in a sentence like ''He was so acerdictous that he took over the whole meeting.'')

If you are fond of the parts bathy- (''relating to depth'') and -ster (''a person engaged in or associated with a particular activity or thing''), you might go through ideas until you got bathyster , ''a particularly deep person.'' If you don't find parts for your meaning, find a dictionary with good etymologies and look up related words. Avoid ordinary words. If you're looking for a part that means ''angry,'' don't look up angry . Look up irate . That gets you the Latin root ira (''anger''). Can't think of a fancier word for what you want? Use a thesaurus.

Finicky word purists might tell you that your new word is macaronic . Do they mean it's cheesy? No, just that it uses roots from two or more languages, like the Latin root and Greek prefix in automobile . (In the word-coining world, words derived from just one language are seen as more sincere. However, this didn't stop automobile , and it shouldn't stop you.)

If the grandeur of Greek and the glory of Latin roots aren't inspiring enough, you may have just as much success merging ordinary words together. Humongous (probably from huge and monstrous ) and ginormous (gigantic and enormous ) are two similar and fairly recent blends of everyday words.

Be practical in choosing your meanings. It's easier for a new word to gain acceptance if it denotes something for which we don't already have a handy word. Trying to persuade people to use your word kwillum instead of the already accepted wall won't work. If kwillum means ''wall being fought over by neighbors,'' you have a better chance.

Invented the perfect word yesterday and want it in the dictionary tomorrow? Be patient. It can take years or decades for a new word to be accepted. You may not ever see your creation in a dictionary, especially if it was a word created for just one use or publication. The joy of having created a word of your very own should be enough. Set on seeing squidgeral between squid and squiffed ? Sending a letter to dictionary editors demanding inclusion isn't the way. Try to get your word used in major media sources (for example, a major newspaper -- not just on the Internet or in local or specialist publications) more than a dozen times, by people other than yourself, over a period of several years. (Or push it on your sitcom-writing friends and hope for a Seinfeldian sociological phenomenon.) Even that's not a guarantee; it just gets your word to the starting line. If your word isn't having much luck finding its way to mouths and pens, well, you can always coin another one. And another one after that.