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| image from wikipedia.org |
/ˈbəmpərglint/
noun
1. raised reflectors on roads, used to denote center lines, fire hydrants and other important transportation markers
"the tired driver listed toward the middle of the road, only startled back to attention when his tires went over the bumperglint along the center line"
synonyms: cat's eyes, road reflectors, road turtles
This word is made up! My husband checked out a book once of words that really should be 'real' words you can find in the dictionary, but for whatever reason aren't. But ever since he told me about the word bumperglint, it has been a ready part of my vocabulary. It's almost onomatopoetic, which I guess is why it stuck for me. So there you go, a new word for your vocabulary! Let's make it real.
So far as IWSG is concerned, I just wanted to take a brief moment to reflect on 'made-up' words. They are tricky, aren't they? We can want to create our own. I mean, we are authors, so we're very creative. We should be able to make our own words, right? But that can be dangerous. Not all of us are as brilliant and able to create entire languages as Tolkien. But at the same time it can make our writing more compact and engaging, if done right. I find that I am terrified to coin my own. Even if there's something that seems like it could be more simple, I am apt to use 'normal' words (lots of them if I have to!) rather than make up my own word for something. This, I think, can be problematic when world-building. If that animal or object is going to play a major part in the book, why not name it? I think I am afraid of coming up with things that sound Seuss'ish.
What about you? Have you read any books that use made up words to good effect? What about books that were terrible this way?
