The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman in permanent additions to the English lexicon; within the text of "Tristram Shandy" Sterne describes the novel as "Shandean," coining a term which still carries the meaning that Sterne originally attached to it when he wrote, "I write a careless kind of a civil, nonsensical, good humoured "Shandean" book..." Strongly influenced by Cervantes' "Don Quixote", Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" also gave rise to the term "cervantic," (which Sterne at the time spelled "cervantick"). In 1766, at the height of the debate about slavery, Ignatius Sancho wrote to Laurence Sterne encouraging the writer to use his pen to lobby for the abolition
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman added for the sake of appearances). Slope is also called "Obadiah", a reference to another character in Sterne's novel. Russian writer Alexander Zhitinsky made multiple references to "Tristram Shandy" in his novel "The Flying House, or Conversations with Milord" (the "milord" of the title being Sterne). In "Surprised by Joy", C. S. Lewis refers to "Tristram Shandy" in the context of trying to describe his interactions with his own father: My father — but these words, at the head of a paragraph, will carry the reader's mind inevitably to Tristram Shandy. On second thoughts I am content that they should.