Improving Style Through Diction, Part 7: Neologism

Another rhetorical device for adding color to writing is the neologism, which is a relatively new word (e.g., frenemy, a friend with whom one frequently quarrels) or a standard word that has taken a new meaning (e.g., friend, now used as a verb meaning to add someone to a personal social media platform). As you might imagine, technological and cultural changes are the source of most neologisms. 

We do not have a set time for when a neologism stops being one. Some people would still consider vaping (2014) and staycation (2005) neologisms but not selfie (2006) and photobomb (2008). I think this is mostly dependent on the beholder's age and the word's pervasiveness.

Some of us might create a neologism of our own among our select circles. For instance, if one of a group of your friends, Terry, is perpetually late for get-togethers, you might say to everyone in that group, "Show up on time. Don't Terry it." 

I was surprised and, to say the least, deeply disappointed, to find online suckbomb defined as a word coined in 2009 to describe weak opponents in fantasy leagues. Absolutely not true! I coined it 43 years earlier, in 1966, in the James Monroe Housing Projects of the Bronx, to mean someone who is truly, indisputably, and unalterably useless or annoying. Don't tell me people don't rewrite history! If I could get my hands on the suckbomb who took credit for suckbomb.