Neologism:
- A new word, expression, or usage.
- The creation or use of new words or senses.
- Psychology
- The invention of new words regarded as a symptom of certain psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia.
- A word so invented.
- Theology A new doctrine or a new interpretation of scripture. [The Free Dictionary]
Noted in “The Roots Of Wokeness,” Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish:
Language changes, and we shouldn’t worry about that. Maybe some of these terms will stick around. But the linguistic changes have occurred so rapidly, and touched so many topics, that it has all the appearance of a top-down re-ordering of language, rather than a slow, organic evolution from below. While the New York Times once had a reputation for being a bit stodgy on linguistic matters, pedantic, precise and slow-to-change, as any paper of record might be, in the last few years, its pages have been flushed with so many neologisms that a reader from, say, a decade ago would have a hard time understanding large swathes of it. And for many of us regular readers, we’ve just gotten used to brand new words popping up suddenly to re-describe something we thought we knew already. We notice a new word, make a brief mental check, and move on with our lives.
An interesting explication of the problematic roots of ‘wokeness.’
