Neologisms may come from a word used in the narrative of fiction such as novels and short stories. Examples include "
grok" (to intuitively understand) from the science fiction novel about a Martian entitled
Stranger in a Strange Land by
Robert A. Heinlein; "
McJob" (precarious, poorly-paid employment) from
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by
Douglas Coupland; "
cyberspace" (widespread, interconnected digital technology) from
Neuromancer by
William Gibson and "
quark" (Slavic slang for "rubbish"; German for a type of
dairy product) from
James Joyce's
Finnegans Wake. The title of a book may become a neologism, for instance,
Catch-22 (from the title of
Joseph Heller's novel). Alternatively, the author's name may give rise to the neologism, although the term is sometimes based on only one work of that author. This includes such words as "
Orwellian" (from
George Orwell, referring to his dystopian novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four) and "Kafkaesque" (from
Franz Kafka). Names of famous characters are another source of literary neologisms. Some examples include:
Quixotic, referring to a misguided romantic quest like that of the
title character in
Don Quixote by
Miguel de Cervantes;
Scrooge, a pejorative for
misers based on the avaricious main character in
Charles Dickens'
A Christmas Carol; and
Pollyanna, referring to people who are unfailingly optimistic like the title character of
Eleanor H. Porter's Pollyanna.
Scientific literature Neologisms are often introduced in technical writing, so-called or 'technical texts' through the process of
lexical innovation. Technical subjects such as philosophy, sociology, physics, etc. are especially rich in neologisms. In philosophy, as an example, many terms became introduced into languages through processes of translation, e.g., from Ancient Greek to
Latin, or from Latin to
German or
English, and so on. So
Plato introduced the Greek term (), which Cicero rendered with Latin , which subsequently became our notion of '
quality' in relation to epistemology, e.g., a quality or attribute of a perceived object, as opposed to its essence. In physics, new terms were introduced sometimes via nonce formation (e.g.,
Murray Gell-Man's
quark, taken from
James Joyce) or through derivation (e.g. John von
Neumann's kiloton, coined by combining the common prefix
kilo- 'thousand' with the noun
ton). Neologisms therefore are a vital component of scientific
jargon or . ==Cant==