Neologism | Definition, Use & Examples

A neologism is a new word that has been introduced to express a new concept or slant on a topic. It can also be a new meaning to an already existing word. Neologism was itself, rather beautifully, a new word.

Neologism examples
When we talk about a new word being “coined” or “minted,” we are giving a new meaning to verbs used to describe the making of coins and applying it to words or phrases.

“Smart” is now used to describe devices and appliances with advanced technology and has led to several neologisms, such as smartphone, smartwatch, and smart socket.

What is a neologism?

A neologism is a word that has recently become widespread in its use and is either new (e.g., “selfie”) or has a new meaning (e.g., “sick” for something that is excellent).

Neologisms are sometimes deliberately coined (e.g., Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “soulmate”), while others appear to spring naturally from popular culture or niche interest groups (e.g., an “ollie,” which is a particular stunt on a skateboard).

Sometimes, the new meanings become the accepted dominant meaning. According to Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue, when King James II saw St. Paul’s Cathedral in London for the first time, he called it “amusing, awful, and artificial, and meant that it was pleasing to look at, deserving of awe, and full of skillful artifice.” Since that time, these words have taken on completely different meanings.

New words are created and discarded all the time, and once they appear in one or more established dictionaries, they are, strictly speaking, no longer neologisms.

What are some different kinds of neologism?

Neologisms evolve, develop, or are created in a number of different ways:

Clipping Sometimes words are formed by shortening an existing word and leaving the meaning intact (e.g., shortening “trigonometry” to “trig” or “fabulous” to “fab”).
Backformation Words can undergo backformation when part of an existing word is removed, usually to change a noun to a verb. For example, donate from donation, edit from editor, and diagnose from diagnosis.
Acronym Taking the first letter from an expression can provide you with a new word, for example, scuba (from self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) and NATO (from North Atlantic Treaty Organization).
Derivation By adding a suffix, prefix, or both to an existing word, new words can be formed. Perhaps the most extreme example is incomprehensible where the root word is hen (meaning “hold or grasp”) and everything else is a suffix or prefix! Other examples of more modern coinings are blogger (from “blog” + “er”) and unfriend (from “friend” + “un”).
Portmanteau A portmanteau neologism takes two words and blends them together, for example, guesstimate (which is somewhere between a ”guess” and an “estimate”) and blog (from “web log”). Sometimes this blending is accidental: umpire used to be numpire until over the years “a numpire” became incorrectly written down, with the “n” migrating back to the “a,” leaving “an umpire.”
Compounding There is a common pattern that emerges with English words that can be traced over time. Two nouns become closely associated (e.g., “head teacher”), then they start to be hyphenated (“head-teacher”), before finally becoming a new word (“headteacher”). Other examples include brainchild and bookworm.
Shifted meaning Youth culture can invert meanings to help with a sense of exclusivity, and in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, bad, sick, and wicked have all acquired positive meanings at various times.
Loanwords and borrowings English is the ultimate stealer of words, with its roots in French, Anglo-Saxon, Greek, Latin, etc. Some words retain a sense of foreignness when they become English neologisms, such as schadenfreude or chutzpah. Other loanwords have been absorbed and go largely unnoticed, like robot or bungalow.
Proprietary eponyms Common words like hoover, rollerblade, escalator, and windsurfer all come from brand names for the type of product that they now describe. Sometimes these proprietary eponyms are almost universal (e.g., diesel or aspirin) and sometimes they are more localized (e.g., xerox meaning “photocopy” is common in the US but not so much in the UK).

Neologism examples

It is almost certainly true that neologisms find traction faster, and probably fade away faster too, in the rapid modern world of communication and social media. There is a wealth of choices for interesting neologisms, from literature, media, and further afield.

Neologism examples
Brunch “Breakfast” and “lunch” combined to describe a meal that falls between the two traditional eating times. It is interesting that the equally plausible “linner” from “lunch” and “dinner” is somehow less satisfying to the ear and has never gained great traction.
Brexit The “British” “exit” from the European Union has spawned suggestions of “Frexit,” amongst others. Thus far, only Brexit has happened.
Laser “Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation” is nowhere near as catchy as laser, no doubt one of the reasons the acronym is now part of the language.
Teleworking Like its great-great-grandparents “telegraph,” “television,” and “telephone,” teleworking takes the Greek tele, meaning “far off,” and “working” to describe people who work remotely from the office.
Meme A cultural artifact, often a short video or image, that spreads quickly over social media. Coined by Richard Dawkins from his own coining “mimeme.”
Gif Although it is often written in uppercase letters, gif is pronounced as a single word, from the phrase “graphics interchange format.” Strictly speaking, it is just a method of compressing a graphical file for transmission over the internet; in common usage, it refers to an amusing image or short video sent via messaging apps.
Bitcoin Bitcoin is an example of a blockchain currency (“blockchain” is another neologism), taking the idea of a computer “bit” and “coin” as a unit of currency.

Frequently asked questions about neologism

What is an example of a neologism?

English is full of examples of neologisms, as it borrows words from other languages and invents new words of its own.

Sometimes new words are necessary (to describe new things, like “trackpad” or “doom scrolling”), and sometimes new words simply add to the variety of the language (e.g., “doozy” is a new way of saying something is excellent).

Other types of neologism include portmanteau neologisms that take two words and make a new one from them, such as “guesstimate” from “guess” and “estimate,” “brexit” from “British” and “exit,” and “brunch” from “breakfast” and “lunch.”

Texting and social media messaging have led to a whole new lexicon of neologisms, sometimes incorporating numerals into a new type of shorthand (e.g., “gr8” for “great”) and sometimes making new words from abbreviations (e.g., “lolz,” which means “out-loud laughs” and comes from the abbreviation of “laugh out loud” to “lol,” which is then pluralized with a “z” rather than an “s”).

Is there a difference between neologism and slang?

Very often, slang words are neologisms that then become more mainstream neologisms before entering the general lexicon.

An example of this would be “slam dunk,” a slang term from basketball, which over the years has become a mainstream expression meaning to perform a task with masterful ease.

Other examples include “burn,” meaning “humiliate,” and “hip,” meaning “trendy” or “cool” (itself from slang).

Sometimes slang is a type of jargon and, as such, isn’t a neologism but part of a lexicon that is known by a particular group of people. For example, a sound technician might ask a bass guitarist if they want to “DI” their signal, short for “direct injection.” This is a type of slang but is unlikely to become part of English more generally.

“Dub,” on the other hand, which is another recording studio word, has made it into more common usage.

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Marshall, T. (2025, January 08). Neologism | Definition, Use & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved February 10, 2025, from https://www.scribbr.com/rhetoric/neologism/

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Trevor Marshall

Trevor has a BA (Hons) in English Literature and Language, an MSc in Applied Social Studies, and Qualified Teacher Status in the UK. He has worked as a probation officer, social worker, and teacher. Having taught English Literature and Language in two schools in Prague for 15 years, he is now freelancing as a photographer and writer.