Where do new words come from‪?‬

Language and words as its basis are tools to communicate meaning.
Language is the key to successful cultural and social living which depends on exchanging
(encoding and decoding) meaning. Therefore new words are assigned to refer to new
meanings. New words and especially coinages (invented, totally new terms) appear in the
emerging fields of society: in the televised contemporary history, in (counter)culture, in
advanced technology and even in daily smalltalk.
'McJob', 'artsy', 'daisy-cutter', 'MIDI', 'emoticon', 'carjacking' or 'cyberspace' to name just a
view recent examples, show the great variety of new words. Due to the complexity and the
on-going developments this paper makes no demand to giving a complete description. The
attempt is to analyse basic concepts and further to sketch relevant areas of neologisms
(dictionary-approved new words). 1 Definitions
In order to the major question of this paper, it's important to define clearly what "new
words" are – "a new word is a form or the use of a form not recorded in general dictionaries".
(Algeo 1991: 2) The crucial condition for the inclusion in dictionaries is frequent usage.
A dictionary which is a source of neologisms is the Oxford Dictionary of New Words.
The editor, S. Tulloch defines a condition: "[…] whether or not the general public was made
aware of […] a new word is any word, phrase, or meaning that came into popular use in
English or enjoyed a vogue during the eighties and […] nineties." (Tulloch. ODNW 1991: v)
The lexiographical procedure seems to be quite important in defining neologisms.
An example by D. Crystal gets things straight (cf. Crystal 1995: 132). As mentioned in the
introduction the basic purpose of new words is to fill representational gaps new meanings or
new mental concepts open. One type of new word is nonce words (from the 16th century
phrase 'for the nonce', meaning 'for the once') which are produced to solve communication
difficulties: Somone who wants to describe excess water on a road uses the word fuddle –
meaning something bigger than a puddle but smaller than a flood. [...]