WORDS WITH A BIBLIOGRAPHIC PROVENIENCE

WORDS COINED BY IMAGINATIVE WRITERS are nothing more than highly cultured pearls of thought. Though they never come into existence spontaneously or naturally, they truly adorn the language and help to perpetuate the works of novelists, playwrights, and poets. Better still, they prolong indefinitely the popularity of many novels, plays and poems that probably would otherwise slip into oblivion. If Henry Carey had never nicknamed Ambrose Philips Namby Pamby, the two eighteenth century poets would probably long be forgotten, and the English language would lack a choice verbalism as well as the humorous lines: