Word Invention Quotes

I'm crazy about Shakespeare, who was a notorious word inventor. And my wife is an English teacher, and she's hilarious.

Whoever invented the word 'grace' must have seen the wing-folding of the plover.

And what better way to get people talking than by creating a new word.

It's really funny, because if you make up words, then people project their own meanings onto it, which I find interesting.

'Refudiate,' 'misunderestimate,' 'wee-wee'd up.' English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!'

My sister called her pillow a pilgo. My brother called his pacifier his nimma. But I don't think I was much of a word generator myself.

Coining a term is not the same as creating a field!

In the room where I work, I have a chalkboard, and as I'm going along, I write the made-up words on it. A few feet from that chalkboard is a copy of the full 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, to which I refer frequently as a source of ideas and word roots.

'Recreative' is a word that I invented because in urban culture, with colloquialism, we invent so many slangs. I don't like the way that 'recreational' sounds - I don't like to say I do a lot of 'recreational' reading. I like to say that I read 'recreatively.' I do a lot of 'recreative' reading.

My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it.

I invent words you think you've heard - spray hopper or swag beetle.

I was able to make up lots of portementos, literally hundreds and hundreds of words... See, I find that mine don't have any meanings. They're not proper. Although I've got a great dictionary of them. It's like the Cockney rhyming slang or something.

I coined a word the other day, but I forgot what it was. It was a good one, it came to me in a dream.