Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who introduces new words or phrases into a language.
  • noun Same as neologian.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who introduces new words or new senses of old words into a language.
  • noun An innovator in any doctrine or system of belief, especially in theology; one who introduces or holds doctrines subversive of supernatural or revealed religion; a rationalist, so-called.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who coins a new word or new words
  • noun An innovator in any doctrine or system of belief, especially in theology.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a lexicographer of new words and expressions

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Back-formation from neologism. Compare French néologiste.

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Examples

  • Proclaiming himself a "neologist" (one who invents new words, new concepts, new forms), from Ehrenberg's point of view art empowers the viewer into a dialogue about "life as art; art as life."

    ArtScene: Felipe Ehrenberg, "Manchuria: Peripheral Vision" at MoLAA 2010

  • "Shakespeare was an avid neologist," he reports, adding that Old English epics such as "Beowulf" often used fancifully evocative compounds in place of common nouns: "slaughter-dew," for instance, instead of blood .

    The Soul of Brevity Daniel Akst 2011

  • To officially describe an entire nation as “pigs” reveals the character of the neologist as well as that of the user.

    The Financial Industry Continues to Ignore the Need for Reliable Answers Roland Schatz 2011

  • Here in California, the self-styled neologist created public art installations for "InSite '94" and "InSite '97" at the San Diego/Tijuana border.

    ArtScene: Felipe Ehrenberg, "Manchuria: Peripheral Vision" at MoLAA 2010

  • Ehrenberg, the catalogue to his show notes, "calls himself a neologist: a cultural activist who dents culture."

    Peter Frank: Blague d'Art: Up Against the Walls 2010

  • Their word-smithing skills are particularly important when they are playing neologist -- coining new words or nomenclature.

    October 2005 2005

  • Their word-smithing skills are particularly important when they are playing neologist -- coining new words or nomenclature.

    Law Porn, Law School Puffspam, Haiku, and Woodpeckers 2005

  • Thus it was that the interpretations of J. Loeb (Die Tropismen, 1913) on the basis of experiments done with lower animals, estab - lished the neologist ideas of “phototropism” (orien - tation or displacement reaction in the direction of light), and of “thermotropism” (reaction directed to - wards a source of heat), to explain animal and perhaps also human behavior.

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas FERNAND-LUCIEN MUELLER 1968

  • There it stands, high above them all, and remote from them all, in its air of great antiquity, in its unaccountableness, in its serene truthfulness, in its unapproachable sublimity, in that impress of divine majesty and ineffable holiness which even the unbelieving neologist has been compelled to acknowledge, and by which every devout reader feels that the first page in Genesis is forever distinguished from any mere human production.

    Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Being Selections from the Chief American Writers Benj. N. Martin

  • And if I may venture to define it in the presence of the distinguished neologist himself, it means, "To deal with histrionically"; or, rather, that's what it will mean a couple of hundred years hence.

    The Return Walter De la Mare 1914

Comments

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  • This is a great word, why isn't it more favorited?

    January 2, 2008

  • Prolonged debate over whether, or not, the neoterists were in truth "just verbarians" prevented participants at the neologists' society conference from truly enjoying their plenary supper. The evening ended with toasts and cheers to the New Word Order.

    March 16, 2013