Word of the Day for Monday, January 30, 2012
neoterism \nee-OT-uh-riz-uhm\, noun:
1. An innovation in language, as a new word, term, or expression.
2. The use of new words, terms, or expressions.
These impressions were not merely of things physical—the contrast, for instance, between the overwhelming antiquity of the western deserts and the neoterism of humanity; or the fabulous nature of the Grand Canyon.
-- Ford Madox Ford, "The Good Soldier"
In his gesture of breaking with the canon of great national literature, Catullus had opened the way to the ambition of future poets to provide Rome with a new canon of works, which would combine the new requirements of neoterism on the levels of research into subjectivity, and stylistic elegance, with the breadth and the depth of a literature intended to represent the cultural patrimony of a nation.
-- Peter E. Knox, "A Companion to Ovid"
Though it did not come into English usage until the late 1800s, neoterism originally comes from the Greek word neōterismós which meant "an attempt to change."
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