Origin
The term was first coined in a 1911 essay by Russell. However, it became widely known only when Russell gave a series of lectures in 1918 entitled "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism". Russell was much influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, as an introductory note explicitly acknowledges.
Russell and Moore broke themselves free from British Idealism which, for nearly 90 years, had dominated British philosophy. Russell would later recall in "My Mental Development" that "with a sense of escaping from prison, we allowed ourselves to think that grass is green, that the sun and stars would exist if no one was aware of them ... ".
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“For, 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 symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)