10 whimsical words coined by Lewis Carroll

Many of us will have our first encounter with strange, long, unfamiliar terms in the books of Beatrix Potter – ‘superfluous’, ‘implored’ and ‘affronted’ were just some that intrigued me as a small person – because she deliberately included at least one difficult word in each story. It takes us back to rhythm and rhyme: even when we don’t understand

First, we can coin or co-opt a term or concept. Having a shorthand for something is a way to circumvent, or at least condense, awkward conversation and the job of describing it.

I realized that he was not so much inventing his own sentences as using the disiecta membra of other sentences, heard some time in the past, according to the present situation and the things he wanted to say, as if he could speak of a food, for instance, only with the words of the people among whom he had eaten that food, and express his joy only w

the proprietor of a mug house or shicker shop, the pub landlord or -lady, is not without his or her own monikers. Among the earliest labels, in the 1500s, were the lick-spigot, ale-draper, and cove-of–the-ken. Today you’re more likely to hear the governor or mine host. In the years in-between, and if you were fond of a tipple, you might have encoun