This study undertakes a systematic analysis of neologisms in authentic German texts, both for the structural principles and regularities involved in their formation and the constitution of their respective meanings. Previous linguistic research has contributed little of any genuine relevance on these aspects. New words evolve in a force-field generated by the tensions between pattern-conformity and context-dependency, tensions conditioned both by the species of word formation and the type of (con)text involved. The latter, in its turn, frequently owes much to neologisms for its coherence.