rather forcible and not very dignified words, for Carlyle's writings
were critical of almost everything and everybody, and he seemed to
love rather ugly words, which made the faults he described seem
contemptible or ridiculous. It was he who made the words _croakery_,
_dry-as-dust_, and _grumbly_, and he introduced also the Scottish word
_feckless_, which describes a person who is a terribly bad manager,
careless and disorderly in his affairs, the sort of person whom
Carlyle so much despised.

The great writers of the present time seem to be unwilling to make new
words. The chief word-makers of to-day are the people who talk a new
slang (and of these we shall see something in another chapter), and
the scientific writers, who, as they are constantly making new
discoveries, have to find words to describe them.

Some of the poets of the present day have used new words and phrases,
but they are generally strange words, which no one thinks of using for
himself. The poet John Masefield used the word _waps_ and the phrase
_bee-loud_, which is very expressive, but which we cannot imagine
passing into ordinary speech. Two poets of the Romantic Movement,
Southey and Coleridge, used many new and strange words just in this
way, but these, again, never passed into the ordinary speech of
English people.

One maker of new words in the nineteenth century must not be
forgotten. This was Lewis Carroll, the author of "Alice in Wonderland"
and "Through the Looking-Glass." He made many new and rather queer
words; but they expressed so well the meaning he gave to them that
some of them have become quite common. This writer generally made
these curious words out of two others. The word _galumph_ (which is
now put as an ordinary word in English dictionaries) he made out of
_gallop_ and _triumph_. It means "to go galloping in triumph." Another
of Lewis Carroll's words, _chortle_, is even more used. It also has
the idea of "triumphing," and is generally used to mean "chuckling
(either inwardly or outwardly) in triumph." It was probably made out
of the words _chuckle_ and _snort_.

But great writers have not only added new words and phrases to the
language by inventing them; sometimes the name of a book itself has
taken on a general meaning. Sir Thomas More in the time of Henry VIII.
wrote his famous book, "Utopia," to describe a country in which
everything was done as it should be. _Utopia_ (which means "Nowhere,"
More making the word out