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Yes, the ability to form new words like that is very powerful. In the beginning the concatenated words tend to stay close to the original separate meanings of t
by yxhuvud 15y ago
Yes, the ability to form new words like that is very powerful. In the beginning the concatenated words tend to stay close to the original separate meanings of the word, but sometimes they start to stray.
(and for the record, the swedish variant of vocabulary is 'ordförråd', which literally mean a store of words)
- mc32 15y agoThe old word in english for vocabulary/glossary was 'wordhoard'. The influence of Latin displaced its usage though. Another linguistic curiosity in English, is that, for some people, when there are two English words with equivalent meaning and one is originally English and the other originally Latin, some people will feel the Latin-derived word more weighty or of higher status than the English word. For example: It's eminently clear she does not desire it. vs. It's utterly clear she does not want it. Or expression: Pardon me? vs. What?
- pessimizer 15y agoIt's enlightening to notice, though I'm not sure it's much of a curiosity - IIRC the Latin comes from Norman French, and they ruled English speakers for a while, so everything Frenchy was marked as more refined.