Recent Neologisms

Abstract

WRITING, as I did, from a little Midland village, where access to an English dictionary was impossible, I am not surprised to find that three words, which I treated as recent coinages, were only re-introductions. Survival impolicy, and indiscipline, are all so naturally formed, that, whether old or new, they are “welcome to stay.” My end was answered by putting a brand on Mr. Wallace's prolificness, by way of contrast. If he is bent on using that monster, he will help to naturalise it by spelling it with ck (instead of c) like thickness. But surely he is not driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of prolifickness and prolificacity, when prolicity is staring him in the face. For my part, I pray that the whole family will (to quote Sylvester again) “shake swift wing,” and be no more seen, By-the-bye, I find the verb to handwrite in the Quarterly Review, April 1871, p. 332. That is a good, if not a new word, and well deserves re-introduction.