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That's true for almost every field of academic research and work; around 70-80% of the words are not in any dictionary (or, if they are, their standard definiti
by nsns 14y ago
That's true for almost every field of academic research and work; around 70-80% of the words are not in any dictionary (or, if they are, their standard definition has nothing to do with their professional meaning).
- tikhonj 14y agoWhat always interested me is how the ratio of new words to repurposed words varies per field. For example, in CS we use a whole bunch of words like "string", "thread", "class", "type", "object", "arrow", "map" and "macro" to denote CS-specific concepts related at best tangentially to the words' original meanings. On the other hand, biology seems to prefer to come up with new words for their technical terminology. I wonder if this is a product of different cultures or something like that.
- repsilat 14y agoThe worst is botany. Botanists use common culinary words to describe almost entirely non-overlapping sets of plants/fruit etc. The "Tomato a fruit?" question is nothing compared to the "berry" thing. According to the botanical definition cherries, raspberries, strawberries, boysenberries and blackberries are not berries, but bananas, watermelon, avocado and pumpkin are. Nuts are worse. According botanists, peanuts, cashews, macadamias, pistachios, walnuts, almonds, pecans, pine-nuts and Brazil nuts are not nuts. According to most lay-people, though, botanists are nuts.