Authorisms: Words Wrought by Writers (29 page)

Grose, Francis.
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
. London: Printed for S. Hooper, 1785.

Hall, Benjamin Homer.
A Collection of College Words and Customs
. Cambridge, MA: John Bartlett, 1851.

Hargrave, Basil.
Origins and Meanings of Popular Phrases and Names Including Those Which Came into Use During the Great War.
London: T. Werner Laurie, Ltd., 1925.

Harker, E. Joseph.
Last Ever Notes and Queries.
A Guardian Book
.
London:
Fourth Estate Ltd., 1998.

Harker, Joseph, ed.
Notes and Queries
. Vol. 5. London: Trafalgar Square, 1995.

———, ed.
Notes and Queries
. Vol. 6.
A Guardian Book. London: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1995.

Holt, Alfred H.
Phrase Origins.
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1936.

Irwin, Godfrey, ed.
American Tramp and Underworld Slang: Words and Phrases Used by Hoboes, Tramps, Migratory Workers and Those on the Fringes of Society, with Their Uses and Origins, with a Number of Tramp Songs.
With essays on the slang and the songs by Godfrey Irwin
.
Terminal essay on American slang in relation to English thieves’ slang by Eric Partridge. New York: Sears, 1930.

James, Brenda.
The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare.
New York: Harper Perennial, 2007.

Johnson, Burges.
The Lost Art of Profanity.
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1948.

Jones, Brian Jay.
Washington Irving—An American Original
. New York: Arcade Books, 2008.

Kane, Joseph Nathan.
Famous FIRST Facts, a Record of FIRST Happenings, Discoveries and Inventions in the United States.
New York: H. W. Wilson, 1933.

———,
More First Facts
. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1935.

Kyff, Rob. “Don’t Guilt People for Verbing Nouns.”
Tribune-Review/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
, July 14, 2012.

Lerer, Seth.
Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language
. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Lewis, C. S.
Studies in Words
(canto). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.

Mabillard, Amanda.
Words Shakespeare Invented.
Shakespeare Online. Aug. 20, 2000. www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/wordsinvented.html.

Macrone, Michael. “  ‘Household Words’: Common and Uncommon Words Coined by Shakespeare . . . an Excerpt from
Brush Up Your Shakespeare
!”
Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter
39.1 (2003): 10.

———. “  ‘Household Words’: Common and Uncommon Words Coined by Shakespeare, Part II.”
Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter
39.2 (2003): 10.

McQuain, Jeffrey, and Stanley Malless.
Coined by Shakespeare: Words and Meanings First Penned by the Bard
. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1998.

Mathews, Mitford M.
American Words.
Cleveland: World Publishing, 1959.

Mead, Leon.
How Words Grow: A Brief Study of Literary Style, Slang, and Provincialisms
. New York: T. Y. Crowell and Co., 1907.

Mencken, Henry L.
The American Language,
fourth ed., New York: ( 1945).

———.
The American Language, Supplement I
, New York ( 1945).

Merriam-Webster.
Word Study
. Vols. 1–45 (Sept. 1925–Oct. 1969).

Meyer, Graham. “Top 40 Chicago Words—Our Contributions to the English Language.”
Chicago
, July 2010.

Morris, Evan.
The Word Detective
. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2000.

Morris, William, and Mary.
Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins
. New York: Collins Reference, 1988.

Plotnik, Arthur. “Shall We Coin a Term? When No Other Word Will Do, Maybe a Neologism Will.”
Writer,
Dec. 2003.

———.
Spunk and Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style
. New York: Random House Reference, 2007.

Pollin, Burton R. “Poe, Creator of Words.” Baltimore: Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, 1974. This lecture was delivered by Dr. Pollin at the Fifty-first Annual Commemoration Program of the Poe Society, October 7, 1973. The Word List from this lecture is available online at www.eapoe.org/papers/psblctrs/pl19741s.htm.

Pratte, Alf. “A Word on Wordsmiths.”
Masthead
, Spring 1999.

Pyles, Thomas.
Words and Ways of American English
. New York: Random House, 1952.

Read, Allen Walker.
Milestones in the History of English in America
. Ed. Richard W. Bailey. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2002.

Reid, Alastair.
Ounce, Dice, Trice.
New York: NYR Children’s Collection, 2009.

Saussy, George Stone III.
The Oxter English Dictionary: Uncommon Words Used by Uncommonly Good Writers
. New York: Facts on File Inc., 1985.

Shenker, Israel.
Harmless Drudges: Wizards of Language—Ancient, Medieval and Modern
. Bronxville, NY: Barnhart Books, 1979.

Smith, C. Alphonso.
New Words Self-Defined
. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1919.

Smith, Mrs. Chetwood.
History’s Most Famous Words.
Boston: Lothrup, Lee and Shepard, Co., 1926.

Steinmetz, Sol.
Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning
. New York: Random House Reference, 2008.

———.
There’s a Word for It
. New York: Harmony Books, 2010.

Stoopnagle, Colonel Lemuel Q.
You Wouldn’t Know Me from Adam
. New York: Whittlesey House, 1944.

Waldhorn, Arthur.
Concise Dictionary of the American Language
. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956.

Wallraff, Barbara.
Word Fugitives
. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

Webber, Elizabeth, and Mike Feinsilber.
Grand Allusions A Lively Guide to Those Expressions, Terms and References You Ought to Know but Might Not
. Washington, DC: Farragut Pub. Co., 1990.

Wilson, Edward O.
Biophilia
. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Wordsworth, Dot. “Dickens’s Coinages.”
Spectator,
Feb. 18, 2012: 62.

Notes

introduction

1.
    Arthur Plotnik, “Shall We Coin a Term? When No Other Word Will Do, Maybe a Neologism Will,”
Writer,
Dec. 2003.

2.
    Logan Pearsall Smith,
Milton and His Modern Critics
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940), 54.

3.
    
Guardian, Jan. 27, 2008, A-3.

4.
    Ben Crystal,
Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard
(London: Icon Books Ltd., 2010), 11.

5.
    Brenda James,
The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2007), 7.

6.
    “[W]hen I happened to be writing about lacrosse in Manchester, England, I worked in the word ‘Mancunian’ three times in one short paragraph. It was the second-best demonym I’d ever heard, almost matching Vallisoletano (a citizen of Valladolid). The planet, of course, is covered with demonyms, and after scouring the world in conversations on this topic with Mary Norris I began a severely selective, highly subjective A-list, extending Mancunian and Vallisoletano through thirty-five others at this writing, including Wulfrunian (Wolverhampton), Novocastrian (Newcastle), Trifluvian (Trois-Rivières), Leodensian (Leeds), Minneapolitan (Minneapolis), Hartlepudlian (Hartlepool), Liverpudlian (you knew it), Haligonian (Halifax), Varsovian (Warsaw), Providentian (Providence), and Tridentine (Trent).” John McPhee, “Draft No. 4,”
New Yorker
, April 29, 2013.

7.
    Leon Mead,
How Words Grow
(New York : T. Y. Crowell and Co., 1907), 181. Twain’s letter to Mead was in October 1900.

8.
    Ibid., 179.

a

1.
    A discussion of this term appears in E. Joseph Harker,
Last Ever Notes and Queries
,
A Guardian Book (London: Fourth Estate Ltd., 1998), 126–27. It references the Steinbeck quote as p. 206 of the Penguin edition of
Grapes of Wrath
.

2.
    Elizabeth Webber and Mike Feinsilber,
Grand Allusions: A Lively Guide to Those Expressions, Terms and References You Ought to Know but Might Not
(Washington, DC: Farragut Pub. Co., 1990), 8–9. Contains examples of the term in use. An annotated version of the original by Jack Lynch of Rutgers University can be seen at http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/modest.html.

3.
    E. Sitwell,
Coll. Poems
(1930) 124: Shone . . . apricots so ripe their kernels seem Gemmed amethysts,—the rose abricotine,

5.
    Alf Pratte, “A Word on Wordsmiths,”
Masthead
, Spring 1999.

6.
    Ellen Goodman, “With Age Comes Wisdom—We Can Only Hope,”
Columbia Daily Tribune
, April 1, 2008.

7.
    William Rose Benét, ed.,
The Reader’s Encyclopedia: An Encyclopedia of World Literature and the Arts
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1948), 15.

8.
    Lawrence E. Cole,
General Psychology
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939), 520, 586.

9.
    Redgate, “The Red Pencil,”
Washington Post,
March 17, 1998, D19.