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Dawn + dew: an innovative portmanteau compound that swiftly fetches two spheres of meaning into immediate relationship with each other. Haloes of meaning, as Hugh Kenner calls them. The haloes blend and a new form emerges, dawn-dew, which does not belong to either sphere and which exists autonomously in its own self-defined terrain. Coming across this word suddenly, in its lyric medium, we cannot help but experience the thrill that stems from the realisation that we have been made witness to a broadening not only of the language, but of the consciousness of the race. The poet has become, in Emerson's words, the Namer or Language-maker,

naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in attachment or boundary. The poets made all the words ... though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolised the world to the first speaker and to the hearer The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture ... the poet names the thing because he sees it, or comes one step nearer to it than any other This expression, or naming, is not art, but a second nature, grown out of the first, as a leaf out of a tree.[42]

As a Language-Maker, Sri Chinmoy's contributions fall mainly within that area of human activity which is governed by the spiritual life: the states, emotions and revelations attendant upon the quest for God. A brief survey of the compounds according to different categories may help us to view the poet's language-making faculty from a more comprehensive vantage point.