Gendered Neologisms and Social Transformation

This Element investigates the emergence and social significance of gendered neologisms. They are new lexical formations that encode gender within existing expressions, such as 'mansplaining', girlboss', or 'manny'. It explores how such words arise in response to changing social realities and how they participate in contemporary debates.

This Element investigates the emergence and social significance of gendered neologisms – new lexical formations that encode gender within existing expressions, such as 'mansplaining', 'girlboss', or 'manny'. Situated at the intersection of sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and morphology, the Element explores how such words arise in response to changing social realities and how they participate in contemporary debates about gender, identity, and power. Drawing on corpus-assisted analysis of journalistic and public discourse, the study examines both the structural formation and the evolving meanings of these neologisms. The findings reveal that gender markers such as 'man-' or 'girl-' rarely function as simple descriptors; instead, they carry metaphorical and evaluative meanings rooted in cultural expectations and gender stereotypes.