The coinages in Seuss

Abstract

The children's books of Dr. Seuss abound in words that the author invented. Inspection shows that these coinages are not arbitrary, raising the challenge of specifying the linguistic basis on which they were created. Drawing evidence from regression analyses covering the full set of Seuss coinages, I note several patterns, which include coinages that are phonotactically ill-formed, coinages meant to sound German and coinages that assist compliance with the meter. But the primary coinage principle for Seuss appears to have been to use words that include phonesthemes (Firth 1930), small quasi-morphemic sequences affiliated with vague meanings. For instance, the coinage Snumm contains two phonesthemes identified in earlier research, [sn-] and [-ʌm]. Concerning phonesthemes in general, I assert their affiliation with vernacular style, and suggest that phonesthemes can be identified in words purely from their stylistic effect, even when the affiliated meaning is absent. This is true, I argue, both for Seuss’s coinages and for the existing vocabulary.