Virginia Woolf, who knew a thing or two about language and ill health, wrote in her essay “On Being Ill” that a person turns to coining new words when the existing language fails to convey the immensity of their illness, “taking his pain in one hand, and a lump of pure sound in the other…so to crush them together that a brand-new word in the end drops out.” She adds that the resulting word is often humorous.