It’s amazing really, with dictionaries packed with words, writers can’t help but make up even more.

Sometimes they do it to name a thing that only exists in their heads. Other times they simply want to amuse, confuse or 'discombobulate' their audience. And once in a while, the word or phrase becomes part of our everyday language.

Here are some of our favourite made up words.

Roald Dahl:

A master at work, Dahl’s ‘The BFG’ features some wonderfully evocative and playful words. There’s the famous snozzcumber, a revoltingly bitter sour vegetable. Not to mention whizzpoppers, noisy flatulence, caused by the drink frobscottle.

Blackadder:

In the episode ‘Ink and Incapability”, Blackadder riles a fictional Dr Johnson, congratulating him for the completion of his dictionary:

“I hope you will not object if I offer the Doctor my most enthusiastic contrafibblarities... I am anus-peptic, phrasmotic, even compunctious to have caused you such pericombobulation.”

Mary Poppins:

Of course, we couldn’t mention made up words without the joyous ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’. Penned by the Sherman brothers, the word took two-weeks to create. It’s defined in the film as ‘something to say when you have nothing to say’.

Shakespeare:

And then there’s the great granddaddy of them all. Shakespeare is renowned for having coined more words that are now used in everyday speech than any other writer – over 1,700 by some estimates. Some of his most famous words or phrases include ‘lie low’, ‘in a pickle’, ‘salad days’, ‘night owl’ and ‘mum’s the word’.

And of course, who could forget Dr Seuss’ ‘zlock’ and ‘ooblek’, Lewis Carroll’s ‘slithy toves’ and ‘jubjub bird’? Not to mention Anthony Burgess’ gang of ‘droogs’ getting off their ‘rassoodocks’ in A Clockwork Orange.

So next time you’re searching for that missing word or elusive new brand name, perhaps the answer’s not in the thesaurus at all. It could be something entirely new.