AN ABRIDGED HISTORY
The origin of words has always been an interesting topic. We speak on average up to 25,000 words each day, but do any of us know from whence they come? Some are Greek and Latin of root; others from the Germanic or romantic branches of the linguistic tree. When God spoke to Adam and Adam uttered history’s first reply, the evolution (or etymology) of words began.
The longest word in the English language is the 29-letter floccinaucinihilipilification. Not many people use this redunant term which ioronically means ‘to estimate something as worthless’. It makes you wonder what it takes for a words to morph into something like this line-filler. And why don’t we take a leaf out of Germany’s book and run all our words together? Their longest official word is:
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsges
etz.
This is made up of 8 different words and translates as: ‘Cattle marking and beef labeling supervision duties delegation law’.
I think a bit of neologism – the coining of a new word – has gone on here. Such words are formed through the processes of portmanteau – the joining of words to form another word – or apocopation; from the Greek, meaning to cut away at a word’s structure. ‘Camcorder’ is a prime example we can relate to. Its makeup consists of camera + recorder. If we want to get fancy though, we nowadays have words like ‘Bling’, ‘Brangelina’ and ‘Watergate’ entering mainstream usage. Common names have also been tidied up. Andrew becomes Andy, Teresa becomes Tess and Ellen becomes Nell. Then you have Morn for Morning, Cinema for Cinematography and Photo for Photograph.
The Term Paper on Language Acquisition Child Words Months
... the distinction between Open class and Closed class words (open-class words are 'context' words like nouns, verbs, and adjectives, while closed-class ... months 12 Months to 18 Months: ogive one-word answers to many new word souse words more than one syllable with meaning (ex. ... to get toys and other experiences using jargon and word souse 2-word sentences (ex: 'my shoe,' 'go bye-bye,' 'more juice') ...
Imagine the possibilitites if we were to invent our own new words. We would find dictironary entries for:
Soonerratherthanlater
Assoonaspossible
Everyonceinawhile
Shellberightmate
In contrast to these bundles of joy are those words that really aren’t; words, that is. They are considered non-words; the most famous of which is attributed to author, James Joyce who made up ‘Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunnt
rovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk’ for his novel ‘Finnegans Wake’. And
who can forget Mary Poppins’ famous song, ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’?
Nonsense words might be fun, but they serve no purpose for people who only use basic vocabulary on a daily basis. Why else would swear words be so proliferate in society? Surely individuals are smarter than to resort to the same few profanities to adequately convey feelings? Not only are their choice of words rude and insulting, they are not as cool as you might think.
So the next time you go to open your mouth without thinking, pause for a moment and carefully select the words you want to say. After all, there are a plethora of meanings and interpretations for everything we say.
