Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms
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This page is a content guideline for Wikipedia, reflecting how authors of this encyclopedia address certain issues. This guideline is intended to help you improve Wikipedia content. Feel free to update this page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes. |
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This page in a nutshell: New terms don't belong in Wikipedia unless there are reliable sources about the term. |
Neologisms are words and terms that have recently been coined, generally do not appear in any dictionary, but may be used widely or within certain communities. Protologisms are neologisms that have not yet caught on widely. (Also, the word "protologisms" is itself a neologism and its use should be avoided.)
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[edit] Using neologisms within articles
Generally speaking, neologisms should be avoided in articles because they may not be well understood, may not be clearly definable, and may even have different meanings to different people. Determining which meaning is the true meaning is original research — we don't do that here at Wikipedia. Articles that use neologisms should be edited to ensure they conform with the core Wikipedia policy: Wikipedia:Attribution. (See Reliable sources for neologisms below for more on supporting the use of neologisms.)
Created terms that add common prefixes or suffixes (such as non- or -ism) to existing words can add clarity, and this may be acceptable in some cases. If not done carefully, however, this practice can result in new terms that are misleading, offensive or that lend undue weight to a particular point of view. (For instance, adding -ism to a word can sometimes be offensive, implying a belief system or political movement. It may also lead readers to believe there is an established school of thought on a topic where there is not.) Where editors disagree about the use of these neologisms it is best to err on the side of not using them.
[edit] Articles on neologisms
Some neologisms and protologisms can be in frequent use and it may be possible to pull together many facts about a particular term and show evidence of its usage on the Internet or even in larger society. It may be natural, then, to feel that Wikipedia should have a page devoted to this new term, but this is not always the case. There are several reasons why articles on (or titled with) neologisms may not be appropriate:
- The first is that Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and so articles simply attempting to define a neologism are inappropriate.
- The second reason is that articles on neologisms frequently attempt to track the emergence and use of the term as observed in communities of interest or on the internet — without attributing these claims to reliable secondary sources. If the article is not verifiable (see Reliable sources for neologisms, below) then it constitutes analysis, synthesis and original research and consequently cannot be accepted by Wikipedia. This is true even though there may be many examples of the term in use.
In many cases, articles on neologisms get deleted (either via proposed deletion or articles for deletion). Articles on protologisms are almost always deleted as these articles are often created in an attempt to use Wikipedia to increase usage of the term.
As Wiktionary's inclusion criteria differ from Wikipedia's, that project may cover neologisms that Wikipedia cannot accept. If you are interested in writing an article on a neologism, you may wish to contribute it to that project instead.
[edit] Reliable sources for neologisms
Support for article contents, including the use and meaning of neologisms, must come from reliable sources. Wikipedia is a tertiary source that includes material on the basis of verifiability, not truth. To support the use of (or an article about) a particular term we must cite reliable secondary sources such as books and papers about the term — not books and papers that use the term. (Note that Wiktionary is not considered to be a reliable source for this purpose.)
Neologisms that are in wide use — but for which there are no treatments in secondary sources — are not yet ready for use and coverage in Wikipedia. They may be in time, but not yet. The term does not need to be in Wikipedia in order to be a "true" term, and when secondary sources become available it will be appropriate to create an article on the topic or use the term within other articles.
An editor's personal observations and research (e.g. finding blogs and books that use the term) are insufficient to support use of (or articles on) neologisms because this is analysis and synthesis of primary source material (which is explicitly prohibited by the original research policy). To paraphrase Wikipedia:Attribution: If you have research to support the inclusion of a term in the corpus of knowledge that is Wikipedia, the best approach is to arrange to have your results published in a peer-reviewed journal or reputable news outlet and then document your work in an appropriately non-partisan manner.
