: Re: Coining words - when and how? Writing an answer to another question, I stumbled upon a quote from The Hobbit: Bilbo rushed along the passage, very angry, and altogether bewildered and bewuthered

@Kevin153

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So what prompts an author to coin a new word?

Usually a feeling that the mere pronunciation of it and its similarities to other words/constructions manages to evoke the feeling they mean the reader to take from it.

Constructing words is like Impressionistic painting, except the author is trying to evoke a feeling with a series of letters instead of paint on a canvas.

How does one go about it?

Studying languages for a long time, or at least the ways a language is used. Tolkien was a philologist, and some of his letters and such suggest that Middle Earth was created mostly because he wanted a history and reasons around the Elvish dialects he was creating.

Or just invent a word that sounds like what you want it to mean in the language you know.

And what does one tell the editor, when the editor insists "bewuthered is not a word"?

"It's meant to mean confusion, and you felt confused, right? But it also sounds like 'befuddled' and 'confuddled', which mean the same thing, and it's a Hobbit word in this book that sounds like it means that, and I put 'bewildered' in right by it to make the point clear, and I just wrote this fairytale for my kids - don't really care that much about getting it published." - An imagined interview between Tolkien and his agent.

Coining a word is like doing a stunt on a skateboard: if you pull it off, it's awesome. If you don't...

Well, you hit the ground either way. One way, you're still on the skateboard.

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