What is "protologism"

n. (context chiefly Wiktionary and WMF jargon English) A newly coined word or phrase defined in the hope that it will become common; a recently created term possibly in narrow use but not yet acknowledged.

A protologism, itself a modern neologism dating from 2005, is a linguistic term for a word that is new and not yet established beyond a small group, a verbal prototype that differs from a neologism in that the term has not been used in publications other than by its coiner, or has not found its way into media. Every word has started out as a protologism, subsequently becomes a neologism and then gradually an ordinary word. The term protologism is a combination of the Greek words protos meaning first or original and logos meaning word. The extent to which words are regarded as neologisms or protologisms is to an extent still classified by some authors in an arbitrary fashion. A coined word that subsequently fails to achieve further traction in usage is a paleologism. The term protologism itself was coined by Mikhail Epstein, an American literary theorist and thinker of Emory University and some publishers have posited that the term has gained sufficient traction that it is a neologism, no longer a protologism, and has caught on. Its definition has also been characterized as describing a proposed term, and one waiting for acceptance.