How to make up a new word

Some of the best stories in history have words that the authors made up themselves. Think about Harry Potter and the words “muggle” and “squib.” Think about the Lord of the Rings. J. R. R. Tolkien not only created words, he created languages.

Have you ever thought about creating a new word to use in your story? Here are two ways to create a new word.

The Randomizer Approach

One way to create a new word is to use what I like to call “The Randomizer Approach.”

Take 26 pieces of paper and write down one letter of the alphabet on each piece of paper; all twenty-six letters of it. Now close your eyes and point to five different letters. If you want a longer word, point to more than five letters. Make sure you have some vowels.

Now write down those letters on a different piece of paper and mix them around until it forms a word you like. Pretend that you’re creating a whole new word in the dictionary and write up a definition for your word. Be creative. Use your imagination. Here’s an example:

“Gosfij. Noun. A fidgety goose.”

Voila! You have a brand new word to use in your stories!

The Mush Approach

Another way to create a word is by using what I call “The Mush Approach.”

Pick any two words—you can choose two words that you like or you can flip through the dictionary and pick two random words to use. Take the two words and pretend you’re cutting them each in half. Use a half from each word and put them together. Create a definition for your word. Here’s another example from a different word I made up:

Sizzle + Bubble = Sizbub

Sizbub. Noun. A magical creature that tends to use lots of onomatopoeias while in conversation.

And there you have it! You’ve just made another word. (Joe here: This trick is also called portmanteau, but I like “The Mush Approach” better, don’t you?)

I’m a lexicographer. I make dictionaries. And my job as a lexicographer is to try to put all the words possible into the dictionary. My job is not to decide what a word is; that is your job.

0:25 Everybody who speaks English decides together what’s a word and what’s not a word. Every language is just a group of people who agree to understand each other. Now, sometimes when people are trying to decide whether a word is good or bad, they don’t really have a good reason. So they say something like, “Because grammar!” (Laughter) I don’t actually really care about grammar too much — don’t tell anybody.

0:51 But the word “grammar,” actually, there are two kinds of grammar. There’s the kind of grammar that lives inside your brain, and if you’re a native speaker of a language or a good speaker of a language, it’s the unconscious rules that you follow when you speak that language. And this is what you learn when you learn a language as a child. And here’s an example: This is a wug, right?

It’s a wug. Now there is another one. There are two of these. There are two … Audience: Wugs.

Erin McKean: Exactly! You know how to make the plural of wug. That rule lives in your brain. You never had to be taught this rule, you just understand it. This is an experiment that was invented by a professor at [Boston University] named Jean Berko Gleason back in 1958. So we’ve been talking about this for a long time.

1:36 Now, these kinds of natural rules that exist in your brain, they’re not like traffic laws, they’re more like laws of nature. And nobody has to remind you to obey a law of nature, right? When you leave the house in the morning, your mom doesn’t say, “Hey, honey, I think it’s going to be cold, take a hoodie, don’t forget to obey the law of gravity.” Nobody says this. Now, there are other rules that are more about manners than they are about nature. So you can think of a word as like a hat. Once you know how hats work, nobody has to tell you, “Don’t wear hats on your feet.” What they have to tell you is, “Can you wear hats inside? Who gets to wear a hat? What are the kinds of hats you get to wear?” Those are more of the second kind of grammar, which linguists often call usage, as opposed to grammar.

2:27 Now, sometimes people use this kind of rules-based grammar to discourage people from making up words. And I think that is, well, stupid. So, for example, people are always telling you, “Be creative, make new music, do art, invent things, science and technology.” But when it comes to words, they’re like,”Don’t! No. Creativity stops right here, whippersnappers. Give it a rest.” (Laughter) But that makes no sense to me. Words are great. We should have more of them. I want you to make as many new words as possible. And I’m going to tell you six ways that you can use to make new words in English.

3:06 The first way is the simplest way. Basically, steal them from other languages.

Linguists call this borrowing, but we never give the words back , so I’m just going to be honestand call it stealing. We usually take words for things that we like, like delicious food. We took “kumquat” from Chinese, we took “caramel” from French. We also take words for cool things like “ninja,” right? We took that from Japanese, which is kind of a cool trick because ninjas are hard to steal from. (Laughter)

3:38 So another way that you can make words in English is by squishing two other English words together. This is called compounding. Words in English are like Lego: If you use enough force, you can put any two of them together. (Laughter) We do this all the time in English: Words like “heartbroken,” “bookworm,” “sandcastle” all are compounds. So go ahead and make words like “duckface,” just don’t make duckface. (Laughter)

4:06 Another way that you can make words in English is kind of like compounding, but instead you use so much force when you squish the words together that some parts fall off. So these are blend words, like “brunch” is a blend of “breakfast” and “lunch.” “Motel” is a blend of “motor” and “hotel.” Who here knew that “motel” was a blend word? Yeah, that word is so old in English that lots of people don’t know that there are parts missing. “Edutainment” is a blend of “education” and “entertainment.” And of course, “electrocute” is a blend of “electric” and “execute.”

4:45 You can also make words by changing how they operate. This is called functional shift. You take a word that acts as one part of speech, and you change it into another part of speech. Okay, who here knew that “friend” hasn’t always been a verb? “Friend” used to be noun and then we verbed it. Almost any word in English can be verbed. You can also take adjectives and make them into nouns. “Commercial” used to be an adjective and now it’s a noun. And of course, you can “green” things.

5:16 Another way to make words in English is back-formation. You can take a word and you can kind of squish it down a little bit. So for example, in English we had the word “editor” before we had the word “edit.””Edit” was formed from “editor.” Sometimes these back-formations sound a little silly: Bulldozers bulldoze, butlers butle and burglers burgle. (Laughter)

5:38 Another way to make words in English is to take the first letters of something and squish them together. So National Aeronautics and Space Administration becomes NASA. And of course you can do this with anything, OMG!

5:49 So it doesn’t matter how silly the words are. They can be really good words of English. “Absquatulate” is a perfectly good word of English. “Mugwump” is a perfectly good word of English. So the words don’t have have to sound normal, they can sound really silly.

6:09 Why should you make words? You should make words because every word is a chance to express your idea and get your meaning across. And new words grab people’s attention. They get people to focus on what you’re saying and that gives you a better chance to get your meaning across. A lot of people on this stage today have said, “In the future, you can do this, you can help with this, you can help us explore, you can help us invent.” You can make a new word right now. English has no age limit. Go ahead, start making words today, send them to me, and I will put them in my online dictionary, Wordnik. Thank you so much. (Applause)

Word formation is of crucial importance in language learning. It gives a chance to enrich the vocabulary with the help of already-known roots and words. In this article, we will discuss affixation (adding suffixes and prefixes to the root) as a great word formation tool.

1. It is important for learners to know how to form nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. If the teacher intends to devote the lesson to noun formation suffixes, he/she may prepare a poster activity with a chart of different noun formation suffixes.

Learners are given a pack of verbs and they need to classify these verbs according to the appropriate noun formation suffIx (e.g. move, friend, revise, appear). This is a very useful activity since the learners work in groups and they come up with the forms rather than being provided with them. See an example of the chart below.

The same activity can be applied while teaching adjective or verb formation suffixes or prefixes.

2. A maze, aimed at recapping suffixes and prefixes, is a great revision activity of word formation. Students try to exit the maze looking for words which follow the same word formation rules. The task might be the following:

• find the right path choosing adjectives whose opposites start with the prefix in-.
• find adjectives which form nouns by adding ance/ ity, etc
• find the words with the correct word formation.

Students are timed and it adds extra competition spirit into the activity.
See an example of the maze activity here.

3. 3. The teacher prepares two sets of word card: prefixes/suffixes and words that fit the chosen prefixes/suffixes to create new words. Students select one card from the Words pile and try to match it with the appropriate prefix /suffix to make a new word, note the new word down, put the Words card aside, and continue until they have no Words cards left. They can play individually/in pairs, in groups, against the clock or against each other to make as many correct words as possible.

The example provided here is targeted at revising noun suffixes -ment, -tion, and -sion.

Parts of Speech Bingo is an old but a tried-and-tested way of not only teaching but also revising word formation. Teacher selects words he/she intends the students to revise and prepares bingo cards. The game can be played either in this way when learners call out names of parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb), students cross out one word at a time (even if they have several nouns on their bingo card) or read out a sentence with a gap. Students who have the fitting word say it out loud and cross it out.

5. Students stand/sit in a circle, you (or any other student) select a category (word building suffix or prefix), students pass the ball around saying the words without repeating them and you monitor whether they are correct. The first person to say the wrong word/not say anything at all is eliminated (leaves the circle). The game goes on until there are two players left. Change suffixes/prefixes for each new round. It is a super engaging game and helps the learners dig deep to find a word which fits the category.

All these games are nice tools to help learners memorize word formation affixes. In order to reinforce the material, learners may be asked to come up with sentences where they need to use some of the given words, make up stories, ask questions to their partners. In this way, the knowledge of these words seems more purposeful to them and they enjoy this great way of expanding their vocabulary.

Word Scrambler

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The Web’s Most Comprehensive Word Scramble Site

This word scrambler is intended to help you unscramble letters to make words. This is part of our larger
collection of puzzle solver tools. This word unscrambler can help you make words from letters — a scramble word cheat.
The mechanics of using the word unscrambler are fairly simple. Enter your letters in the box and hit the big friendly button.
The word unscrambler will help you make new word(s) from letters. This can be used to get a little help at scrabble, give yourself
some help with the newspaper puzzle, or even serve as a jumble cheat. Apparently a number of people use our site as a
jumble word scrambler, to help with their Sunday puzzles ( unscramble the letters ). It will support wildcard characters as well.

This unscramble words cheat also works as a scrabble word finder or anagram solver.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve snuck into the word cookies jar, you can find solace.
It isn’t a random word generator however.
The scrabble dictionary inside the word solver is great when you need to find a powerful word to play for word games.
Go ahead, use us as your source of cheat answers. Some random word won’t give you away. We can unscramble words with the best of them.

Other Word Tools

We have other word solver tool(s), particularly if you are trying to unscramble words. This word scrambler shows you letter combination ideas and possible word(s) for your jumble game. This covers any game where you unscramble letters to make words. If you are trying to pattern match, we have other tools. We have a scrabble word finder, of course — which finds scrabble words, particularly longer words or ones with a blank tile. The word scramble engine also works as an anagram solver, matching random letters. Face it, our collection of unscramble word cheat tools have scrambled letters and jumbled letters well under control.

If you are trying to guess a missing letter, check out our hangman solver.
The hangman solver also works fairly well as a crossword scrambler if you know some of the letters (pattern matching).
We also have another word unscrambler for wheel of fortune that can handle multiple words.
The hangman solver also works as a crossword solver, a great source of crossword answers. When you think about it, a crossword
requires very similar pattern matching to hangman. You have the benefit of an additional clue to help narrow the field.
In any event, you can use our hangman solver to help with a crossword puzzle.

If you are trying to match a pattern of unknown letters (eg. an 5 letter word, first and last letter the same), check
out our cryptogram helper.

Word Scrambler Games & Puzzles

If you like solving word scramble puzzles, check out our new
word scramble game. We did give a little additional help by color-coding the
correct letters (green means you got it, red means keep trying).

We’ve also a cryptogram solving game. These puzzles are based
on substitution cipher codes, where each letter has been swapped with another letter.
Your job is to figure out which letter is which and decode the message. The game keeps
track of how long it takes to solve each puzzle and lets you know how your score
compares with others.
This article about how to solve
a cryptogram may also be helpful.

The next step up from using our word puzzle solver is outright code cracking.
If you like cracking codes, you may also find our article about pen and paper

cryptograph interesting. We walk through some of the building blocks of
manual cryptography (pre-World War I) and how these codes were broken. Those with a
technical bent may find our presentation on

breaking substitution ciphers via computer to be
interesting as well.

We also have puzzle makers (our wildcard). There are many custom options
you can use to create a word scramble. (Basically the inverse of using a word generator or letter unscrambler.
The scramble game can be used to test your knowledge of vocabulary or spelling. Very helpful for students and home schoolers.
We have a tool you can use to make a crossword puzzle. The crossword tool has some pre-defined puzzles as well.

The printable word scramble worksheet is very popular, along with the other printables. The word scramble maker generates puzzles very efficiently (including an answer sheet and valid word checks). The other option is to use word combination ideas to test for jumbled word comprehension.

More From Hanging Hyena:

While creating words from your alphabet is one way to create a word from letters, the scrambler can also be used to create anagrams. For example, if you want to find words in your letters, you can do it with a word unscrambler and anagrams will never be the same again. This is a boon to folks who aren’t great at word
scramble puzzles, since you can use a word unscrambler to keep up. It gives you the freedom to enjoy word games such as scrabble or text twist.

Word scramble puzzles are at the heart of many great word games and word puzzles. You can unscramble your way to happiness.
One great thing about creating a word from letters is that you can be certain that each letter stands alone and has its own meaning. The language we speak uses letters to convey things about thoughts and feelings. Need word lists? This site can provide them as well.

You should think about how the letters in the word are part of what makes up the word. Think about how they relate to each other and how they combine to form the word. If you take all the letters of the word, there will be several hundred of them and not all of them are used for forming the word.
Our word solver is built around this concept. The word scramble solver is a great example of it; you can use it to simplify a word search.

When you want to create a puzzle and solve it, the next step is to choose the best words. You might be using a dictionary to help you but for most people it would be better to do it by using a word unscrambler. This is also known as a word descrambler.

When choosing the words, you need to pick ones that you think are related to the letters that you have. For example, when you make a puzzle, you need to make sure you don’t use the same letters twice. Although it might seem obvious, it will be very difficult to create a puzzle that isn’t related to any letters.

There are a lot of books and games out there that involve spelling words and trying to get letters that stand for different words. However, these kind of games only help people who are already familiar with the meanings of letters.

When you create a puzzle that involves letters, it will be much easier for people who aren’t familiar with letters to break the puzzle down. That is why if you want to create a word from letters, you need to use a scrambler to create anagrams.

There are many reasons why you would want to use this type of tool, but the main reason is that it makes it easy for people to figure out a puzzle without using a dictionary. This will help people who don’t know the alphabet and want to figure out how to solve a puzzle.

When people get ready to write a book or create a blog, it can take a while to write all the words and then to actually read the words and phrases. It is much easier to use a scrambler to create anagrams and these will help you get started writing and reading the words quickly.

Word generators are becoming more popular because people want to be able to solve puzzles as well as write them. This is a great way to solve anagrams without using a dictionary.

It doesn’t matter if you are using a scramble helper, letter scrambler or Scrabble helper, you will be able to create a puzzle that is related to the letters you have. Many people will be surprised at how much easier it is to solve anagrams with a scrambler.

If you are using a scramble helper or Scrabble helper, you will be able to create anagrams without using a word finder. One of the fun benefits of getting good at unscrambling words.

Word Game Tactics

The scrambled word list is sorted by word length (5 letter words, 4 letter words, etc.). You should be able to find the unscrambled word answer you need from our word unscrambler tool (or the jumble solver/scrabble cheat). We add new words (valid words, meaningful word options) to the dictionary on a regular basis. It will find the highest scoring word from your entered letters (consonants and vowel options). So go have fun!

Please send all feedback, complaints, and lucrative sponsorship deals to admin@hanginghyena.com (page: wordsolver).


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