PreDictionary : Experiments in Verbal Creativity

The electronic edition of this book is prepared by the author.

About author

Mikhail N. Epstein (Epshtein) is a literary theorist and critical thinker and is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Cultural Theory and Russian Literature at Emory University (Atlanta, USA). His area includes Western and Russian postmodernism; new methods and interdisciplinary approaches in the humanities; semiotics and language evolution; ideas and electronic media. Born in Moscow in 1950, he moved to the USA in 1990.

PreDictionary is a dictionary of would-be words that are designed to fill gaps in language and generate new concepts and meanings. Focused on the creative potential of a neologism and a dictionary entry, this book is dedicated to both poetry and poetics. The concept of lexicopoeia comes from Ralph Emerson: "Every word [lexis] was once a poem." To keep language alive, we must constantly reinvent, rejuvenate, and reanimate it to imbue it with poetry. This means, in particular: to give birth to new words. One freshly coined word, a "lexicopoem" is the most concise genre of literature, more terse than even an aphorism. The main part of the book includes 150 entries in 14 thematic sections. All new words are supplied with definitions and examples of usage. The theoretical parts, Introduction and Afterword, discuss the word- and dictionary building process in relation to the needs of language development. The author sees the transition from the analysis to the synthesis of language as a most promising path of innovation in contemporary "post-analytic" philosophy and linguistics.