"As Robbert-Jan Henkes discovered, Joyce coined this word in a notebook that he compiled between August and September 1923. Though it did not make it into any of his works, the coinage was prompted by Joyce’s reading of the Scienza nuova prima. Vico claims that the native Americans “believe that everything new or great that they see is a god.” Joyce takes this statement of polytheism as an invitation to word formation and projects the observation forward to the period of the American frontier. Indeed, “matchgod” seem to be equal parts Vico and Leo Dillon’s reading material in “An Encounter.”"
A read on www.joycewords.com