WORD FUGITIVES: IN PURSUIT OF WANTED WORDS, by Barbara Wallraff, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 192 pages, $14.95.

Let’s suppose that you are chortling over someone’s boast about a visit to a posh resort. You may or may not know that both “chortle” and “posh” are made-up words. Lewis Carroll, the author of “Alice in Wonderland,” combined chuckle and snort to produce chortle. And posh is said to be an acronym for “Portside out, starboard home,” from the era when British colonists tried to get cabins on the shady side of the ship both to and from India.

A new book by Barbara Wallraff, whose bimonthly column, Word Court, is a favorite among readers of the Bangor Daily News, deals with what she calls “recreational word coinage.” Her special twist is to tell about the hunt for words to describe facts or situations that don’t yet have a name.

For example, what’s a word for the fear that, when you throw a party, no one will show up? She put that question in either her Web site or her column on “Word Fugitives” in the Atlantic magazine. Many readers suggested “guestlessness” and “empty-fest syndrome.” Others liked “guestnoenteritis” and “humilibration.”

Another question she threw out was, “How about a word for that dicey moment when you should introduce two people but can’t remember one of their names.” Readers came up with “whomnesia,” “persona non data.” “nomstruck,” and “nomenclutchure.” Another suggested weaseling out of the fix by using a “mumbleduction.”

Wallraff reports hundreds of such efforts to fill gaps in the English language, some clever and others ridiculous or better left unsaid.

She advises would-be word coiners to divide their inventions into keepers and discards, tossing out any that are cryptic, opaque or impenetrable. She hates any that are “irrelevantly naughty,” such as a proposed word for fearing no-shows at a party: “premature expectulation.” She considers that one about as tasteless as a reference to Alzheimer’s disease or schizophrenia.

One of her favorites is “blabyrinth,” for the maze of voice mail menus when you phone a business or government office.

If this sort of thing appeals to you, it still might be too much to read the book right through. Try leaving it on the bedside table or in the bathroom for reading quick excerpts.

You may conclude, as I do, that word coining is one of those activities, like the old karaoke singalong fad or the current blogging, that are more fun for the doer than for the listener.

Isn’t there some word for this situation?

Richard Dudman is a veteran newspaperman who lives in Ellsworth. He can be reached at rdudman@gwi.net.