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Do you MAKE UP WORDS?
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Actually the Wendy thing is not true. It may not have been commonly known in London. However there were Wendy's in the British Census over 20 years before Barry created Peter Pan, and as they weren't babies in the census the name must have been around much longer.Also the name is a common familiarisation of names starting Gwen...(eg Gwendolyn) which were around for considerably before the 1881 Census.
Of course whether he knew about the name or thought he had created it, is wide open to debate.
My writing is almost exclusively sci-fi, so I have had to occasionally create new words, and frequently new names too. My logic is that the English language is constantly developing and changing to adapt to new technology and social changes, so why shouldn't I have a hand in that development too?
Oh yes. If you don't like your options, invent or tinker. A word leaps into your head, that doesn't exist. It does now. They have a logic, these words that suggest themselves, they feel right and make sense even when you can't quite analyse why. Your 'tricentennial' is way better than what's in the dictionary.
It has a great tradition behind it.
I'm rewriting a new scifi novel that takes place far from human culture, so much local language used to explain how things work to the hapless human colonists had to be created. Beginning with overheard sounds which are first considered animal noise by the humans, it expands adding local words for everyday situations, relationships, plants and animals. Not Dothraki or Elvish -- I'm not looking to begin a new language, just a few local words sprinkled into the speech.
Paul, a big thanks for the Wendy info. I've been carrying that false fact around in my head since who knows when. Since I'm older than dirt, that's a long long time.
I think making up words is one of the joys of writing. There was a quote (I believe from George Bernard Shaw but I can't find on google right now) about writing. It said that writers should never allow the language to dictate what they say, the should wrestle and beat the language into saying what the writer feels. I've always tried to live by that idea.
That certainly gives the go-ahead to writing in dialect!
Richard, dialect is perfect for making up your own words. I cite Frank Herbert, and, of course, George Orwell. What is Newspeak but inventing new words? Look what Star Trek has given us.
Rachel wrote: "... It said that writers should never allow the language to dictate what they say, the should wrestle and beat the language into saying what the writer feels. I've always tried to live by that idea."Love that quote.
Joreid wrote: "Richard, dialect is perfect for making up your own words. I cite Frank Herbert, and, of course, George Orwell. What is Newspeak but inventing new words? Look what Star Trek has given us."Star Trek is one to be very careful of if you are writing sci-fi. It's SO easy to fall into using Star Trek terms (phasers, teleports, subspace, stardate, tricorder, warp, holodeck etc. etc.)
In my books, I'm creating a quite different universe so I avoid Star Trek terms as much as possible, but it's so hard as they are part of the language now.
Making up words is a hobby of the protagonist to my novel. So indescribably lazy with descriptions and the like, he narrates by bastardizing verbs as he sees fit. It's his M.O.
I love making up words to describe things when no other will quite work. And why shouldn't we? Writers have been doing it since the dawn of literature. Look how many words/phrases Shakespeare created that are now in popular use. I'm not saying I'm a Shakespeare equivalent, but if he had fun doing it, why can;t we? :D
When writing about the tercentennial of the Salem witch trials I balked at the awkwardly sounding term so I called it the tricentennial. To me it was much more reader friendly. Not one proofreader or the editior ever questioned that word. You might have to go to a dictionary if you came across tercentennial but not tricentennial.
Fantasy and science fiction is well known for making up words. So why not try it the next time you get stuck trying to find the perfect word to fit. You might wind up as a reference in the OED.