The term phantonym as a descriptor of words which are often thought to mean one thing, but in fact mean another, was coined in 2009 by New York Times columnist Jack Rosenthal (see the article quoted above). This isn’t however, the first time the word phantonym has been used. In 2006 it was adopted by British novelist Kit Whitfield, who used it to describe: ’… the feeling you get when you’re searching for the perfect word: that there is a word for this concept that’s not in the thesaurus, but you can’t quite remember it … and you’re forced to go with a word that’s slightly wrong’. Even further back, it was also used by author Irwin M. Berent in the subtitle of a book Getting your Word’s Worth, published in 1993. Berent used phantonym as a clever blend of phantom and antonym, in relation to a discussion of antonyms (opposites) which didn’t really exist but were made up for fun, such as understand/overstand and belittle/bebig.