Whitman tried his hand at coining words such as “presidentiad”. He did not coin many words; “Probably the largest group is composed of his agent-nouns, which is not surprising for a poet who was so occupied with types and classes of men and women” (Matthiessen 528–9). Although Whitman did not know other languages, he also borrowed words from them, particularly French. This can be traced back to his working class orientation. “His belief in the need to speak not merely for Americans but for the workers of all lands seems to have given the impetus for his odd habit of introducing random words from other languages, to the point of talking about ‘the ouvrier class’!” (529). Dealing with foreign languages he used different techniques. In some cases