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List added by tartan_skirt on 18 March 2009 06:53
When Literature Creates Language |
Views : 383 Comments : 8
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 24  8.9 Big Brother n. informal a person or organisation exercising total control over people's lives.
-ORIGIN 1950s: from the name of the head of state in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). doublethink n. the acceptance of conflicting opinions or beliefs at the same time. -ORIGIN 1949: coined by George Orwell in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. newspeak n. ambiguous euphemistic language used chiefly in political propaganda. -ORIGIN 1949: an artificial official language in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. tartan_skirt's rating:
 
Babbitt n. dated, chiefly N. Amer. a materialistic, complacent, and conformist businessman.
-DERIVATIVES Babbittry n. -ORIGIN 1922: from George Babbitt, the protagonist of the novel Babbit by Sinclair Lewis. 
2 0 brunch n. a late morning meal eaten instead of breakfast and lunch.
(Featured in Punch on August 1st, 1896. Editor Guy Beringer is credited with the creation of the word.) 
120 8.1 catch-22 n. a difficult situation from which there is no escape because it involves mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.
-ORIGIN title of a novel by Joseph Heller (1961). 
diddle v. informal 1 to cheat or swindle. 2 N. Amer. waste time. 3 vulgar, slang, chiefly N. Amer. have sex with.
-DERIVATIVES Diddler n. -ORIGIN C19: prob. from the name of Jeremy Diddler, a character in the farce Raising the Wind (1803) who constantly borrowed small sums of money. 
2 8 Don Juan n. a seducer of women.
-ORIGIN C19: from the name of a legendary Spanish nobleman and libertine. 
Frankenstein (also Frankenstein's monster) n. a thing that becomes terrifying or destructive to its maker.
-ORIGIN from the title of a novel (1818) by Mary Shelley, whose eponymous main character creates a manlike monster which eventually destroys him. tartan_skirt's rating:
 
1 0 gargantuan adj. extremely large.
-ORIGIN C16: from Gargantua, a voracious giant in Rabelais' book of the same name, + an. 
1 0 Godwottery n. Brit. humorous affectedly archaic or elaborate speech or writing.
-ORIGIN 1930s: from the line 'A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!', in T. E. Brown's poem My Garden (1876). 
27 8.6 Grinch n. N. Amer. informal a spoilsport or killjoy.
-ORIGIN 1970s: a character in the children's story How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Suess. 
66 7.9 grok v. (groks, grokking, grokked) US informal understand intuuitively.
-ORIGIN 1960s: invented word. (check required) 
239 7.9 hobbit n. a member of an imaginary race similar to humans, of small size and with hairy feet, in stories by J. R. R. Tolkien.
-ORIGIN 1937: invented by Tolkien in his book The Hobbit, and said by him to mean 'hole-dweller'. tartan_skirt's rating:
humpty-dumpty n. (pl. humpty-dumpties) informal 1 short fat person 2 a person or thing that once overthrown cannot be restored.
-ORIGIN C18: from the egg-like nursery-rhyme character Humpty-Dumpty, who fell off a wall and cnould not be put together again. 
jabberwocky n. (pl. jabberwokies) invented or meaningless language.
-ORIGIN early 20th cent.: from the title of a nonsense poem in Lewis Caroll's Through the Looking Glass (1871). mimsy adj. rather feeble and prim or over-restrained. -ORIGIN 1871: nonsense word coined by Lewis Carroll; a blend of MISERABLE and FLIMSY. 
Milquetoast n.chiefly N. Amer. a person who is timid or submissive.
-ORIGIN 1930s: from the name of a cartoon character, Caspar Milquetoast, created by H. T. Webster in 1924. 
lilliputian adj. trivial or very small. n. a Lilliputian person or thing.
-ORIGIN C18: from the imaginary country of Lilliput in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), inhabited by 6-inch high people, +ian 
27 8.5 Lolita n. a sexually precocious young girl.
-ORIGIN from the eponymous character in the novel Lolita (1958) by Vladimir Nabokov. tartan_skirt's rating:
33 8.5 Peter Pan n. a person who retains youthful features, or who is immature.
-ORIGIN the hero of J. M. Barrie's play of the same name (1904). 
Pickwickian adj. of or like Mr Pickwick in Dickens's Pickick Papers, especially in being jovial, plump, or generous. > (of words) misunderstood or misused, especially to avoid offence.
10 6.4 Pollyanna n. an excessively cheerful or optimistic person.
-DERIVATIVES Pollyannaish adj. Pollyannaism n. -ORIGIN the name of the optimistic heroine created by the American author Eleanor H. Porter (1868-1920). 
pooh-bah n. a pompous person having much influence or holding many offices simultaneously.
-ORIGIN from the name of a character in W.S. Gilbert's The Mikado (1885). 
4 9 quark n. Physics any of a group of subatomic particles carrying a fractional electric charge, postulated as building blocks of the hadrons.
-ORIGIN 1960s: invented by the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann and assoc. with the line 'Three quarks for Muster Mark' in Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939). 
52 8 quixotic adj. impractically idealistic or fanciful.
-DERIVATIVES quixotically adv. quixotism n. quixotry n. -ORIGIN C18: from the name of Don Quixote, the hero of a chivalric romance by the Spanish writer Cervantes (1547-1616), +ic. 
robot n. a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer.
-DERIVATIVES robotization or robotisation n. robotize or robotise v. -ORIGIN from Czech, from robota 'forced labour'; the term was coined in K. Čapek's play R. U. R. 'Rossum's Universal Robots' (1920). 
141 7.1 Romeo n. 1 (pl. Romeos) an attractive, passionate male seducer or lover. 2 a code word representing the letter R, used in radio communication.
-ORIGIN the hero of Shakespeare's romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet. 
0 0 runcible spoon n. a fork curved like a spoon, with three broad prongs, one of which has a sharpened outer edge for cutting.
-ORIGIN C19: used by Edward Lear, perh. suggested by later C16 rouncival, denoting a learge variety of pea. 
26 7.8 Scrooge n. a person who is mean with money.
-ORIGIN from the name of Ebenezer Scrooge, a miser in Charles Dicken's novel A Christmas Carol. 
1 8 Svengali n. a person who exercises a controlling influence on another, especially for a sinister purpose.
-ORIGIN Svengali, a musician in George du Maurier's novel Trilby (1894) who controls Trilby's stage singing hypnotically. 
Tiggerish adj. Brit very lively, energetic, and cheerful.
-ORIGIN from Tigger, a tiger in A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh, characterized by his vitality. 
Tweedledum and Tweedledee n. a pair of people or things that are virtually indistinguishable.
-ORIGIN orig. names applied to Bononcini and Handel, in a 1725 satire by John Byrom; later used for two identical characters in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (1871). 
14 7.1 Utopia n. an imagined perfect place or state of things.
-ORIGIN the title of a book (1516) by Sir Thomas More, based on Gk ou 'not' + topos 'place'. 
1 0 Xanadu n. (pl. Xanadus) an imaginary wonderful place.
-ORIGIN alt. of Shang-tu, an ancient city in SE Mongolia, as portrayed in Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan (1816). Comments
Grand Assault
Posted : 6 months ago at May 25 10:40
Gulliver's travels also gave us Laputan for the dictionary.
Prelude
Posted : 6 months ago at May 25 13:00
in same vein as Don Juan, Casanova is also a term used for seducer of women, and I believe its based on a novel.
Prelude
Posted : 6 months ago at May 25 13:04
Great list, though I would object to Peter Pan and Humpty Dumpty. I've never heard it being used in modern language. Or it maybe it did enter the english language for a period of time, but it certainly isn't in use today, to the best of my knowledge.
Natália
Posted : 6 months ago at May 25 16:44
great list! :D
Prelude
Posted : 6 months ago at May 26 7:07
About Casanova, a term synonymous with the art of seduction, it's all based on Casanova's own part autobiography, part memoir, 'Histoire de ma Vie': http://www.listal.com/search/books/1/?query=histoire+de+ma+vie
tartan_skirt
Posted : 6 months ago at May 26 11:43
Prelude, Casanova would maybe be more appropriate for my Authors in the Dictionary list, but not here. Thanks for the suggestion though. :) Plus, with phrases such as Peter Pan and Humpty Dumpty it completely depends on geographical region, medium and topic. I've heard them and they are in the dictionary, but others may come across them less often or not at all.
tartan_skirt
Posted : 6 months ago at May 26 11:46
GA: I can't find Laputan in my current dictionary, though this could just mean it has dropped out of current usage.
Grand Assault
Posted : 5 months, 1 week ago at Jun 18 18:19
Ok, how about 'Behemoth'? It's from that bible book about God and stuff. Off the top of my head, babel, leviathan and sodomy probably originate from it too. I'm not sure if you're counting the bible though!
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Description
Sometimes literature has the power to form new words, or feature characters who so strongly represent their features that a word is coined in their honour. Some neologisms make it, others don't. Here are some of the words that made in into everyday language prominently enough to have their own dictionary entry. Rules: It's got to be in the OED listed as originally coming from the work of literature. I may make some allowances to this in some cases though. I'm currently working from a Concise OED 11th edition revised, so it is a few years old and may not have quite every example possible. Work in Progress See Also: Authors in the Dictionary Language from Television (under construction)
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