I’m in the middle of reading, among other things, Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Kelman’s narrator, Harri, has a quirky vocabulary inflected with what I’m guessing are expressions from his native Ghanaian: asweh, hutious, advise yourself. “In England,” he remarks, “there’s a hell of different words for everything. It’s for if you forget one, there’s always another one left over. It’s very helpful.”

The English have their Bard to thank for that, of course. I read recently that the average person uses about 17,000 words in one lifetime, but Shakespeare used twice that in his works. When English didn’t provide him with the right word, he made it up, including: besmirch, excitement, hush, pander and rant — all of which appear in Hamlet.

So, have you found yourself forgetting a word lately, and wished you could just make one up? What would the word be?

When I was going through the stress of planning a rapidly approaching wedding as well as interviewing for then starting a new job, there were days when I needed to unplug and just take the dogs and get away for a few hours. I referred to it as needing to "decompstress".

Generally speaking, one won't coin a word unless it is necessary or desirable. That makes it hard to predict just what currently non-existent word will be necessary or desirable in the future.

The response above gives a word that was coined previously - when it was needed.

Just the other day, I used the neologism "spasming" for one actively having spasms. Or is it a neologism? Did I coin a word, or did I merely incorrectly convert a part of speech, the noun spasm, for use as a verb? I read this is more common today than previously. (In your Shakespeare example this would be akin to Shakespeare using the existing verb "excite" to create (or coin) a new noun form - excitement.)

"Hamlet" is one of my faves. I reread frequently.

I agre with what FrankJBN said, "Hamlet" is a good word.