Wiktionary: List of protologisms

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Table of contents

1 Introduction 2 Criteria for Inclusion: 3 Reasons for Protologism Listing 4 Topical List of Protologisms (unstable neologisms) for English 4.1 Material terms 4.1.1 Computer terms 4.1.2 Electronic game terms 4.2 Artistic terms 4.2.1 Literary Criticism 4.3 Linguistic Terms 4.3.1 Grammar Words (pronouns, conjunctions) 4.3.2 Names 4.4 Social terms 4.4.1 Family terms 4.4.2 National, Cultural, etc. 4.4.3 Words relating to Meetings 4.4.4 Computer Identification 4.5 Political terms 4.6 Scientific Terms 4.7 Unclassified

Introduction

This page houses proposed protologisms, or newly invented words.

The term protologism, (derived from the Greek protos, first + Greek logos, word; compare prototype, neologism) is a term invented by Mikhail Epstein of Emory University to refer to a newly created and proposed word which has not yet gained acceptance. As the inventor characterizes it, "It is a prototype or a hypothetical projection of a new lexical unit before it may become current in writing or speech." The word "protologism" itself is in regular use within the Wiktionary community, and is thus not a "hypothetical projection." It does not, however, appear to be regularly used outside this context. It might be better characterized as jargon.

A commercial venture related to such 'words that should be words' and which popularized them were the books called "Sniglets" (by Rich Hall and Friends). Some have used this term to popularize their own 'should-be' words. (However, these seem to have been generally confined to purposes of humor. There are other existing projects for gathering such speculative words. This page is merely another.

In contrast to protologisms, neologisms are words that have already been in public usage by authors other than their inventors. As soon as a protologism finds its way into newspapers and websites, journals and books, it becomes a neologism and merits a separate Wiktionary entry.

Wiktionary discourages the writing of separate articles for protologisms, preferring instead to list them on this page with a brief description. Pages appearing to be such creations will be marked with the following notice:

Criteria for Inclusion:

Protologisms listed here should meet an expressive need, follow some logic in their etymology, follow standards of spelling, intonation, and pronunciation in the language or dialect, and should be ideally "catchy" enough to have a chance of gaining wider acceptance. They should not already be in use for other purposes. A protologism is usually a completely new word, not a new sense of an existing word. Nevertheless, it is to be expected that some protologisms will inadvertently result in a new definition for an otherwise obscure word, or in a multilingual dictionary such as this conflict with an identically spelled word in an other language.

This page should afford everyone the opportunity to see words they have wanted to use to express a concept or logical device come into existence (and possibly more widespread use) and be shared among those interested in general in new word ideas or those wishing to only monitor on their "watchlist" changes to neologisms for a certain topic in which they are interested.

Protologisms should only be listed here, and not given their own articles. By similar logic, existing pages should not refer to protologisms, though of course definitions of protologisms must refer back to existing words. Where a word has both a normal mening and a protologistic one it will suffice to add a "see also link to this page.

Foreign language protologisms are beyond the scope of the English Wiktionary, and should be restricted to the Wiktionary for the language in question in accordance with its rules.

Reasons for Protologism Listing

By consensus it has become policy to not include protologisms in the dictionary proper. The purpose of the Wiktionary is to define and translate "all words in all languages", not to create new ones. Just as Wikipedia strives towards a Neutral Point of View, it is the goal of Wiktionary to describe language as it exists and has existed in the world, not to correct it or make suggestions. But Wiktionary should describe new words as people actually use them. It is not always easy to distinguish between a protologism and a legitmate word. For instance, some words may not qualify under the criteria for inclusion, but be used by small cliques. To avoid conflict and due to uncertainty of the legitmancy of some words, a listing of protologisms becomes necesary.

Topical List of Protologisms (unstable neologisms) for English

Following is a list of currently proposed protologims, with brief definitions. Feel free to add additional suggested words for others to consider (see instructions below on adding new words), but please do not add articles for them. Humorous additions are fine as long as they fill an expressive gap. Please see the "criteria for inclusion" section below for more detail.

Material terms

• teratomobile: An SUV [1] or over-sized pickup truck, esp. those with bulging wheel wells designed to look like bunched-up jaw muscles.
• spik: The part of the interior of a hat that touches the top of the wearer's head.

Computer terms

• wikiphilia: Love of wiki sites.
• WikiSaurus: An experimental thesaurus constructed within Wiktionary (see Wiktionary:WikiSaurus

Electronic game terms

• Moogless or Mooglessa: A female Moogle or female Final Fantasy fan
• Mooglophile: A Final Fantasy fan
• Mooglophobia: Hatred of the Final Fantasy video game series
• pechnidiocrisia: Criticism, censorship of, or restriction on video games
• pechnidiology: Study of electronic games
• apostate gamer: A video game player who has given up religious faith or heritage in favor of his or her own video game interests.
• necro-port: A direct port of a video game that was originally designed for an ancient game system that is converted for play on a modern game system, especially a port of an Famicom/NES game on a sixth generation console. Note: This already seems to have a FRPG sense -- probably a particular kind of teleport spell

Artistic terms

• aspiratage A surrealist method in which impressions are made in the pile of carpeting by the movement of a vacuum cleaner, or the carpeting with its impressions that are made using this method.
• describe a room game A game in which players take turns describing a room until they are in some sense "finished".
• echo drawing A method of surrealist drawing in which one makes a sequential drawing by "mirroring" the drawings that came before.

Literary Criticism

• abreticular or apoistic: Derived by copying from the Internet without attribution
• nonabreticular or unapoistic: Original in the sense of not being plagiarised from the Internet
• etceteric Of or relating to a person who is like others of his or her kind; not deserving to be named individually; marginal, anonymous, obscure.
• "pseudoesqueishoidian" Something which demonstrates the quality of being almost like something which in turn is kind of like something else. Mostly used satirically, in reference to those who liberally sprinkly their writing and or speech with pointless suffixes ("Shepardesque", "Beckettoid" or "alone-ish") and prefixes (("a pseudo-intellectual").

Linguistic Terms

• babelrybski (Part translation of Babelfish into Russian: рыба, fish) Text which has been mangled by machine translation to or from Russian.
• semantopoeic: Of a word whose spelling or pronunciation is particularly reminiscent of its meaning (as opposed to the sound of its meaning as in the case of onomatopoeia).

Grammar Words (pronouns, conjunctions)

• hu: A clipping from "human," a 3rd person gender-neutral pronoun, relates both to a man and a woman. It is pronounced [hju:] like "hu" in "human." Its brevity and morphological structure (one open syllable: a consonant + a vowel) make it similar to other 3rd person pronouns. A typical, easily recognizable member of this class: he, she, hu. T he derivative forms of "hu": reflexive "huself," {h ju:self}, possessive "hus" {hju:z}, and objective "hu" {hju:}. Note: This is already used as a surname.

  Examples: It's the vice-president's job to support the president and take hus place when hu is away. A hero is one who places huself at risk for another. An employee may choose to cover only huself and hus child or any number of children.

Names

• sarconym: The meat name for a specific animal. The word beef is the sarconym for cattle. Venison is the sarconym for deer.
• arsenonym: The masculine term of the animal species. Bull is the arsenonym for cattle.
• thelonym: The feminine term of the animal species. Cow is the thelonym for cattle.
• gynenym: Any female first name.
• theoton: A book of translations. "English-Japanese Theoton," "Spanish-French Theoton," "I just bought a theoton for German to Chinese," "paperback theotons."

Social terms

• logocrisiaphobia: Opposition to censorship
• conspadamo: love at first sight

Family terms

Note: Some of these terms are seen in other contexts, particularly as proper names.

• cousina: Female cousin
• cousino: Male cousin
• aunta: Maternal aunt
• aunto: Paternal aunt
• unclo: Paternal uncle

National, Cultural, etc.

• Menconianism - censorship on the basis of Biblical standards, especially in conservative religious groups. (Coined after Al Menconi)

Words relating to Meetings

• meetnik: (n) (meet + suffix nik) a person who enjoys meetings and all sorts of administrative events and tries to attend as many of them as possible.

Being socially active is one thing, meeting for the sake of meeting is another. I try to stay away from meetniks for whom getting together is an end in itself.

Computer Identification

• Macnaticism: A fanatical devotion to the Macintosh operating system, leading to the disparaging of all other systems or names associated with those systems, or possibly the people using those systems. Also Macnatic or Macnatical.

Political terms

• autoanarchy: A status quo of few if any rules governing individuals or nations, enforced by one powerful authority.
• oligoanarchy: A status quo of few if any rules governing individuals or nations, enforced by a few powerful authorities.

Scientific Terms

• pseudolixir: Something which appears to be a miraculous cure or beneficial product, but is in fact false. (Coined from the words "pseudo" {the greek word for false}, and "elixir", which means a miracle cure.)

Unclassified

• impecculate: When an immaculate argument is impeccable, it is impecculate.
• interphane: 1. The time between concerts, meetings, etc. of a celebrity or diplomat. 2. The period in which preformers are backstage.
• phontograph: A photograph taken using a cellular phone (short form: phonto).
• slippyondirty: Unpleasant, disagreeable; Very bad, dreadful; exceedingly funky (in either sense)