Avoid Neologisms

neologism, From Merriam-Webster:

a new word, usage, or expression... or the use of an old word in a new sense
a meaningless word coined by a psychotic

Thesis

The use of neologisms puts the focus of a discussion on the words being used, rather than the ideas at stake. It is almost always more useful to focus on ideas. Therefore, accept the inherent slipperiness of words, and AvoidNeologisms.

Neologisms can distract from the idea you're trying to get across:

You may spend too much time defending the neologism instead of explaining the concept.
You may find yourself using the neologism as a conversational point-of-entry, subconsciously discounting someone's contribution if they don't adapt to your vocabulary. Others will resent this, of course. (Academics do this a lot, as do business-people.)
Others may perceive your neologism as an attempt to abuse the language for your own gain, and will resent the ideas you're trying to explain.
Relying on neologism may make you less eager to go to the effort of explaining your idea; you may subconsciously believe that the neologism is so catchy and self-explanatory that you have simply to repeat a few times and everyone else will come around to your way of thinking.

Chances are good that your language is rich enough to support the idea you're trying to get across, even if your idea is new.

Semantic precision is overrated; when you're unsure as to how exactly to get your idea across, perhaps it's more useful simply to use more words than to struggle to find the perfectly exact word.

Antithesis

Perhaps CostinCozianu or others can flesh this part out more sensibly than I can, but below is a first stab at it:

There are many examples in history of neologisms being useful, otherwise languages would never grow or change.

Neologisms are usually created because of the need for greater semantic precision.

People who are speaking in a language that is not their native language often learn many neologisms quicker than they learn more subtle, deeply rooted syntactic concepts. Take for example, the computer-science student who learns English to work at a software company; e's likely to know many CS terms, but perhaps will stumble in trying to explain other things.

In English (and possibly in many languages), no two words mean the same thing. The language comes with a built-in semantic precision, so why not use it, and keep refining it with new contributions?

(See also: the arguments on DeGeneralization)

Another Antithesis:

HerbCaen's gossip column was heavily laden with neologisms. He used them to attach connotations (sometimes friendly, often weirdly derogatory) to familiar words. The effect was very humorous.

Some examples:

Berzerkeley
Dambarcadero
Beatnik

Some of these neologisms were very effective. The Embarcadero Freeway was a tall highway in San Francisco's waterfront district. Caen opposed it, and continued campaigning against it for a generation after it was built. The 1989 earthquake damaged it. In the aftermath of the quake, the people of San Francisco chose to tear down the Embarcadero. It was replaced by a pedestrian promenade, and renamed "Herb Caen Way..." just before he died.

Synthesis

Are there guiding principles as to when to AvoidNeologisms, and when neologisms are good and useful?

First guess: Perhaps when a concept has a certain agreed meaning among a community of people, it's more good than bad to reify it as a neologism. Take TheSourceCodeIsTheDesign, or DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork. On the other hand, it seems like on DTSTTCPW, there are always people arguing about meaning: "That's not simplest!" But the concept is definitely useful.

JerrySeinfeld? created neologisms all the time, and they became rather accepted. :They fall into many different patterns:

Kennings: close-talker, high-talker,
Word combinations: unvite
abbreviations: to have [the upper] hand
New applications of existing words: buffer zone (between oneself and one's parents)

What these all have in common is that there's not a lot of real invention going on. Existing language elements are simply being used and combined in new ways.

Of course, JerrySeinfeld? is a comedian, not a science writer! Allow me to express my emphatic agreement with the thesis of this page. -- DanielKnapp

Old discussion, to be deleted soon, probably -

I agree that we should avoid using neologisms whenever possible. But remember that neologisms are usually created because of the need for greater semantic precision.

Another problem is that for me as a non-native English speaker, some neologisms are more familiar than some more popular words. Especially those related to my formal education (mathematics and computer science). I believe I am not the only non-native English speaker who has this problem. And I don't believe that greater precision is a problem, unless somebody points out a more common word that has exactly the same meaning, or a meaning that is more appropriate in the context.

And speaking about meaning, I heard an English scholar who said that no two words in English ever have exactly the same meaning. Therefore if I acknowledge his authority in the field (I'll look for a reference) and take his words to be true, it follows that neologisms are either used in the wrong place (their meaning doesn't fit in the context) or their use is perfectly justified and we can't replace them with other words. -- CostinCozianu

[Alternative spellings of a word may have the same meaning, but perhaps that doesn't count as two words.]

But perhaps semantic precision is overrated. Most complex, controversial concepts - that is, the interesting ones - don't often fit easily in a clean, simple, quick term. As to why that is, I'm not sure. Maybe users of a language accept a large degree of semantic slipperiness in individual words and phrases. Consider well-established words like "art" and "love". They aren't new at all, and people use them all the time in some contexts. Yet their exact meaning is often vague, or highly dependent on context. The words have been around for hundreds of years, and the language's users have still not settled on an unambiguous meaning for them.

I try instead to accept the inherent vagueness of each individual word, and just use more words to compensate. This makes me a pretty wordy person, of course.

Possibly related pattern might be: DontRelyOnLoadedWords?. Words like: art, love, God, capitalism, etc., etc. Consider the current semantic flurry on a page like CorporateCommunists - much of which seems to be stemming from the page's thesis, which brings in big loaded words like "Capitalism" and "Communism". It reminds me of lots of discussions I've narrowly avoided that start with the statement "That's not art" or "That is too art." (I write arts criticism from time to time.) I think the distinction of art-vs-not-art is entirely meaningless. I'd much rather prefer to address questions that do not lean so heavily on a loaded question. Instead, I'd rather ask: "Is it any good? What's good about it? What's it good for?" ("Good" is a vague term, too, of course, but it's not loaded.)

SteveJobs said in a recent keynote that his new TiBooks have "both power and sex", using "sex" to mean the beauty of the design.

Moved here from ArchitectingWord

I don't believe the word really exists as a proper word (Dictionary folk please comment!).

Like many of these words we have a general idea what is meant... but... are we losing something by making up such words? -- MartinNoutch

English is full of made up and borrowed words, we should not be surprised to see it happening. What is proper changes over time; this new 'architecting' word may not be proper now, but in 50 years will be proper and will have been proper for decades. If you want a static language, try French.

In English, anyone can make up a word. If it is good enough, it will stick. Seems more fun that way.

I think the use of this non-word is largely due to lazy speaking. For example, you are an architect, you design architecture... it's too easy to then simply say one is architecting in order to imply designing at a high-level. Of course, it's silly. An artist who creates art is not arting. A scientist working in the field of science does not go about Sciencing. You've convinced me to never use this non-word again and I thank you for that. I don't know why ComputerScience seems to have such a penchant for creating non-words. For example, few people realize that initialize is not a word. The horror is that it is now actually starting to show up in dictionaries. -- RobertDiFalco

["Initialize" has been around for a while. I'll try to trace when it was first used in print.]

Oh, get over it. Languages evolve, and all words were "made up" or "invented". Would you rather stick to a few dozen words "made up" by semi-erect half-apes 8000 years ago, or expand your capacity to communicate by adopting conceptually richer words "made up" by relatively far more sophisticated people today?

Anybody who brings a dictionary into a discussion of language understands neither dictionaries nor language. A dictionary does not define a language. A dictionary merely reports observations about a language at a certain point in time, and from a severely limited point-of-view. Usage defines a language. As long as it remains in active use, a language is alive and fluid. Language is not only geographically local, but "localized" to non-geographic communities as well.

[I prefer to use words which are widely understood, so I find a dictionary very useful. What I deplore is loss of appropriate English grammar (because it's not learnt in the first place).]

Hell, language is actually personal. The only reason I can communicate with you is that our two personal languages have a high degree of overlap due to our mutual affiliation with one or more communities. The only person in the universe who speaks "The Queen's English" is the queen herself.

'Architecting' is very much a word, just as 'sculpting' is a word. Hmmm - no. A sculptor is one who sculpts. The noun is derived from the act. Now if the noun was architector, you might have had a point. -- EuanMee [Unfortunately, modern marketingspeak allows "architect" to be a verb!] I assert that among architects, 'architecting' carries connotations that 'designing' does not carry, just as 'sculpting' carries connotations that 'chipping' does not carry. If scientists do not feel that what they do warrants a more precise word than 'investigating' then that's their own business.

As Orwell showed, language governs thought. Rich language promotes rich thought. Stagnant language leads to stagnant thinking. The word 'proper' might be the most obscene word in the English language. When you see it, substitute 'backwards'. For goodness' sake, you work in one of mankind's newest fields of endeavor! Don't be conservative; don't fear change!

Martin has made an excellent point. I would like to add this observation: because we are so dependent on words, we assume that words have referents, and we are very uncomfortable with words that do not. (Cf. Alice's conversations with the Fawn and with HumptyDumpty - see LanguageAbuser.) When a word without any proper meaning appears (and I am inclined to agree that "architecting" is such a word), we experience an overwhelming urge to reify the term, inventing the meaning that we feel the word suggests it ought to have. This is dangerous - once we have done that, we can easily dupe ourselves into believing we know something we didn't know before. But mere definition is not knowledge. (If Dr Glockenspiel sees 100 new patients with distinctive symptoms not previously observed, he, and other practitioners, may find it convenient to diagnose the 101st unfortunate victim as having Glockenspiel's syndrome, but they don't know any more about what's wrong than they did before, do they?)

Once a term like "architecting" gains currency, people naturally tend to assume it has a referent, and to act as if it did. The next thing you know, they are writing books about Power Architecting, Excellence in Architecting, and Architecting for the New Millennium. The International Professional Architecting Society (IPAS) is formed, launches CommIPAS (Communications of the IPAS, a refereed journal of the theory and practice of architecting), and starts lobbying for professional licensing exams for Architects (or Architecters, or Architecturists - because one horrible back formation tends to spawn another). Someone organizes ArchitExpo 2001, to be held in San Francisco, or maybe Milan, and from there the thing rolls on and can never be killed.

And yet it's all just navel-gazing; the term contains nothing that wasn't already encompassed by the activities of designing and "building" (that is, "writing") software (i.e., computer programs) and software systems (that is, collections of computer programs).

-- CameronSmith, possibly being ornery and cynical again

Cameron, I agree with all you write here and this problem seems rife in all disciplines at the moment. -- MartinNoutch

New words that are strongly disliked may be classified as slang. Slang words are, of course, words. However, it may take a very long time before they cease to be slang.

Why so much opposition to a simple word like architecting? As sculpting is the creation of sculpture, achitecting is the creation of architecture. No, the words sculptor and architect don't play in line, but there was already an inconsistency there. There's a well-known quote about the purity of the English language. Verbing is a great part of our language, and avoids the problem that most neologisms have, that nobody knows what they mean. Meanwhile words like grok enter our vocab without much comment, because they sound like slang.

He or she who verbed architecture was improperly grammar teachered. -- ChrisGarrod from a long line of architects

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