polyglot

/ˈpɑlɪˌɡlɑt/

Book of Genesis
Complutensian Polyglot Bible
Targum Onkelos

PIE word
 *glōgʰs
Borrowed from Attic Greek πολύγλωττος (polúglōttos, “speaking many languages, multilingual”), alternative form of Ancient Greek πολῠ́γλωσσος (polŭ́glōssos, “speaking many languages, multilingual”), from πολῠ́ς (polŭ́s, “a lot of, many”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₁- (“to fill”)) + Attic Greek γλῶττα (glôtta), Ancient Greek γλῶσσᾰ (glôssă, “tongue; language”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *glōgʰs (“tip of corn”)) + -ος (-os, suffix forming o-grade action nouns). The English word is analysable as poly- + -glot.
Noun sense 1 (“publication in several languages”) is probably derived from Late Latin polyglottus, from Attic Greek πολύγλωττος (polúglōttos): see above.

der

πολῠ́γλωσσος

'[T]is thought the two and twenty Languages which Mythrydates the great Polyglot King of Pontus did ſpeak, wer all within the circumference of Anatolia in regard his dominions extended but a little further: […]

1630 August 4 (Gregorian calendar), James Howell, “LVIII. To the Right Hon. the E. R.”, in [Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ.] A New Volume of Familiar Letters, […], 3rd edition, volume II, London: […] Humphrey Mos[e]ley, […], published 1655, →OCLC, section, page 77:

For this flyaway son of a Phœnician did not seem to wait for the decision of the polyglot Judges of the Emigration Board.

1910 January 12, Ameen Rihani, “On the Wharf of Enchantment”, in The Book of Khalid, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, published October 1911, →OCLC, book the first (In the Exchange), page 38:

Of a person: speaking, or versed in, many languages; multilingual.

шматмо́ўны

of a person: speaking, or versed in, many languages — see also multilingual

a polyglot bible    a polyglot lexicon

Containing, or made up of, several languages; specifically, of a book (especially a bible): having text translated into several languages.

poliglot

containing, or made up of, several languages


polyglot

polyglots (plural)
polyglott (alternative)

/ˈpɑlɪˌɡlɑt/

πολῠ́γλωσσος

[T]hose coming to the warehouses' doors fired them, and burned all the books and the pillars of the church, […] A great want thereof there will be of books, specially Latin books and foreign books; and, among others, the Polyglottes and new Bible, which he believes will be presently worth £40 a-piece.

1666 October 15 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “October 5th, 1666”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys […], volume VI, London: George Bell & Sons […]; Cambridge: Deighton Bell & Co., published 1895, →OCLC, page 7:

But ſince that period the biblical apparatus has been much enriched by the publication of polyglots; […]

1792, William Newcome, “Arguments Shewing that an Improved Version of the Bible is Expedient”, in An Historical View of the English Biblical Translations: The Expediency of Revising by Authority our Present Translation: And the Means of Executing Such a Revision, Dublin: […] John Exshaw, →OCLC, page 239:

A publication in several languages; specifically, a book (especially a bible) containing several versions of the same subject matter or text in several languages.

Laſtly, a polyg[l]ot or good linguiſt may alſo be term'd a uſefull learned man, ſpecially if vers'd in School-languages.

c. 1646–1647, James Howell, “VIII. To the Right Honourable My Lord of D.”, in [Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ.] A Third Volume of Familiar Letters of a Fresher Date. […], 3rd edition, volume III, London: […] Humphrey Mos[e]ley, […], published 1655, →OCLC, section, page 15:

(also figuratively) One who has mastered (especially when able to speak) several languages.

poliglot

one who has mastered (especially when able to speak) several languages

(also figuratively) A mixture of languages or nomenclatures.

programming language
programming language

(programming) A program written to be valid in multiple programming languages.


lingo

en-noun

lingo (countable and uncountable, plural lingos or lingoes)

From Latin lingua (“language”) + -o (diminutive suffix).

[...] I have Thoughts to tarry a ſmall Matter in Town, to learn ſomewhat of your Lingo firſt, before I croſs the Seas.

1700, [William] Congreve, The Way of the World, a Comedy. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, Act III, scene xv, page 47:

"You see, ma'am, I can't divest myself of my professional lingo," observed Mr. Banks.

1846, George W.M. Reynolds, The Mysteries of London, volume 1, London: George Vickers, page 327:

Nobody could make out plain what she said, for she was mainly jabbering Swede lingo, but there was English enough, of a kind, to give us some idee.

1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

(informal) Language, especially language peculiar to a particular group, field, or region; jargon or a dialect.

argot

language peculiar to a particular group or region


multilingual

en-adj

multilingual (comparative more multilingual, superlative most multilingual)

more multilingual (comparative)
most multilingual (superlative)

Hampton Court railway station
multilingualism

In reality, the multidimensionality of language contact in multilingual environments ensures no such neat compartmentalisation.

2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 9:

Of, relating to, or involving multiple languages.

(of a person) Able to communicate in a number of languages.

shumëgjuhësh

able to communicate fluently in multiple languages


recension

[ɹ̠ʷɪ̈ˈsɛ̃n(t̚)ʃə̃n]

From Latin recēnsiō (“enumeration; review; reassessment”), from recēnseō (“to count, reckon; to examine, review; to go over, revise”), from re- (“again”) (from Proto-Italic *wre (“again”); further etymology uncertain) + cēnseō (“to give an opinion; to suppose, think; to assess”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱn̥seh₁-, *ḱn̥seye- (“to announce”)).

der

The existence of two major literary centres in the First Bulgarian Empire led to the emergence of two recensions of Old Church Slavonic: the Bulgarian Recension and the Macedonian Recension.

The Russian recension of Old Church Slavonic emerged after the 10th century and was characterized by the substitution of /u/ for the nasal sound /õ/.

As the Hebrew manuscripts which have been in use since the eleventh century have all been corrected according to some particular recension or edition, they have from this circumstance been classed into Families, according to the country where such recension has obtained. These families or recensions are three or four in number, […]

1828, Thomas Hartwell Horne, “On the Manuscripts of the Bible”, in An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, 6th corrected and enlarged edition, volume II, London: Printed for T[homas] Cadell, […]; Edinburgh: W[illiam] Blackwood; Dublin: R. Milliken, →OCLC, section I.VII (Modern Families or Recensions of Hebrew Manuscripts), page 85:

Next, what is meant by the more accurate copies of the Nyssene father? Were they the copies which were most carefully written? This would seem to be what he meant by the expression; but in deciding his question, we are not to ask about the care of the transcribers, but by what critics the text was settled, to what Recension the Mss. [manuscripts] belonged. Was it to the Recension of Origen, Hesychius, or Lucian? Certainly not to Origen's, or the Palestinian Recension; for Victor of Antioch and the Scholiasts are unanimous in stating, that the Παλαιστιναῖον εὐαγγέλιον contained the verses.

1836, [Johann Leonhard Hug], M[oses] Stuart, “Supplement Respecting Some Disputed Portions of the Gospels”, in David Fosdick Jr., transl., Hug’s Introduction to the New Testament: Translated from the Third German Edition […], Andover, N.Y.: Printed and published by Gould and Newman, →OCLC, § 75 (Mark 16:9–20), pages 479–480:

Nor is it true, as asserted by some writers, that the modern Bulgarian dialect has made the widest departure of any from the old Slavic tongue. While many of the grammatical inflexions have ceased to appear, yet the radical words remain substantially the same as in the days of Cyril and Methodius, and we will hazard the statement that if the most ancient copy of the Gospel before the Russian recension were read in the presence of Bulgarians and Russians it would be no less intelligible to the former than to the latter.

1871 January, “Art. II—The Slavic Races.”, in D. D. Whedon, editor, Methodist Quarterly Review, volume XXIII (Fourth Series; volume LIII overall), New York, N.Y.: Carlton & Lanahan; San Francisco, Calif.: E. Thomas; Cincinnati, Oh.: Hitchcock & Walden, →OCLC, pages 41–42:

A family of manuscripts which share similar traits; the variety of a language which is used in such manuscripts.


sign language

en-noun

sign language (countable and uncountable, plural sign languages)

It is safe to say that the academic world is now convinced that sign languages are real languages in every sense of the term.

2000, Wendy Sandler, Diane Lillo-Martin, edited by Mark Aronoff and Janie Rees-Miller, The Handbook of Linguistics:

(countable) One of several natural languages, typically used by the deaf, in which words consist of hand shapes, motions, positions, and facial expressions.

I'm taking night classes to learn sign language.

(uncountable) The sign language (sense 1) that is used locally or that is mistakenly believed to be the only one.

There are some unique properties found in sign language compared to spoken language.

(uncountable) Sign languages (sense 1) considered collectively.

Even Maxwell the trader, who has been most among them, is compelled to resort to the curious sign language common to most of the prairie tribes.

1847, Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail:

(countable or uncountable) Communication through gestures as a substitute for language, for example, between monks under a vow of silence or during trade amongst different linguistic groups.


mother tongue

/ˈmʌð.ə ˌtʌŋ/

/ˈmʌð.ɚ ˌtʌŋ/

From Middle English mother tonge, modyr tong, equivalent to mother + tongue. Compare Old Norse móðurtunga (“mother tongue”).

His mother tongue is a relatively conservative dialect of Aramaic.

One young Tamil teacher had assimilated the sound-system of English so thoroughly to that of his mother-tongue that none of the Chinese and Malay children understood him.

1958, Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 277:

Throughout their long history as a minority, Anglo-Indians learned their "father tongue" but were indifferent to their "mother tongue," an indigenous Indian language.

1973, Noel Pitts Gist, Roy Dean Wright, Marginality and Identity, →ISBN:

A father tongue is a foreign language, therefore English is a foreign language not a mother tongue.

1993, Janice Rae Williamson, Sounding differences: conversations with seventeen Canadian women writers, →ISBN:

Ramanujan has also argued that many Hindu men have both a mother tongue (the everyday language, such as Tamil, spoken by women downstairs, in the back, in the kitchen) and a father tongue (once Sanskrit, more recently English, the literary lingua franca spoken—or at least discussed—by men in the front rooms).

2011, Wendy Doniger, The Implied Spider, →ISBN, page 144:

In the early Middle Ages, 'mother tongue' was largely 'a pejorative term to describe the unlearned language of women and children' (Haugen 1991: 82). This reflected the low status of women in society and contrasted with Latin, the more prestigious 'father tongue' on the continent.

2012, Máiréad Nic Craith, Narratives of Place, Belonging and Language, →ISBN:

The language one first learned; the language one grew up with; one's native language.

ቋንቋ ኣደ

ḳʷanḳʷa ʾadä

Questions about respondents' place of birth, their parents' place of birth, nativity, and language use (called “mother tongue” and “father tongue”) were added to the Census between 1850 and 1960.

2006, Yo Jackson, Encyclopedia of Multicultural Psychology, →ISBN:

Informed by the experience of other parents who had successfully raised their children with more than one language and our own observations, we knew clearly that Léandre and Dominique's mother tongue and father tongue would not have a chance without deliberate 'control' of their linguistic environment.

2008 -, Xiao-Lei Wang, Growing Up with Three Languages: Birth to Eleven, →ISBN, page 58:

The language spoken by one's mother, when it differs from that spoken by one's father.

The other is the maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak.

1854, Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods:

We learn the father tongue to prove we have outgrown the mother tongue.

1992, Gail B. Griffin, Calling : essays on teaching in the mother tongue, page 169:

In each case, we are reborn -- a fact that explains Thoreau's preference here for the father tongue over the mother tongue, as Cavell explains: "A son of man is born of woman; but rebirth, according to our Bible, is the business of the father."

2017, Andrew Norris, Becoming Who We Are, →ISBN:

Informal speech, as opposed to educated language.


dactylology

The use of the fingers and hands to communicate ideas, especially by the deaf.


leden

From Middle English leden, leoden, from Old English lēoden (“national or popular language”). More at leid and leed.

inh

he was expert in prophecies, / And could the ledden of the gods unfold […]

1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:


foreign language

en-noun

foreign language (plural foreign languages)

gjuhë e huaj

any language other than that spoken by the people of a specific place

Irish courts will hear cases in English or Gaelic, but speakers of foreign languages must find an interpreter.

A language that is not widely or officially spoken in a particular place.

The children struggled in their Welsh lessons because they didn't have any experience of foreign languages.

A language that is not one's native tongue.


bleaching

bleaching (countable and uncountable, plural bleachings)

/ˈbliːt͡ʃɪŋ/

The process of removing stains or of whitening fabrics, especially by the use of chemical agents.


fingerspelling

fingerspelling (countable and uncountable, plural fingerspellings)

fingerspellings (plural)
FS (alternative)

Any system for representing the letters of an alphabet using just the hands; a manual alphabet that is a representation of a written alphabet.


monolingual

en-adj

monolingual (comparative more monolingual, superlative most monolingual)

more monolingual (comparative)
most monolingual (superlative)

Thus approximately 98% of signs contained English, and 93.5% of signs were wholly in English. As far as linguistic landscapes go, this is a case of extreme monolingual dominance in a multilingual setting.

2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 5:

Knowing or using a single language; written or spoken in a single language.

ܚܕܵܢܵܝ ܠܸܫܵܢܵܐ

ḥdānāy liššānā


disemvowel

en-verb

disemvowel (third-person singular simple present disemvowels, present participle disemvowelling or disemvoweling, simple past and past participle disemvowelled or disemvoweled)

disemvowels (present singular third-person)
disemvowelling (participle present)
disemvoweling (participle present)
disemvowelled (participle past)
disemvowelled (past)
disemvoweled (participle past)
disemvoweled (past)
disenvowel (alternative)

By the way, what has become of the conspiracy of Brander Matthews et als to disemvowel the English language? Not that it matters.

1906 September 5, Puck, volume 60, number 1540, New York, N.Y.: Puck Pub. Co., →OCLC:

The trick will be in usurping as many vowels as you can, thus disemvoweling the others, and the one with the most words when all or as many letters as possible are used up wins.

1930, Judge, volume 98, New York, N.Y.: The Judge Publishing Co., →OCLC, page xlix, column 2:

"What happened?" the Amigoid asked. / "D'nt knw," she said. "Jst wk p nd hrd y tw tlkng n thn, sddnly nd wtht wrnng, thr ws ths ns." / "What?" Robotech_Master asked. / "I think I know what happened," Lawrence said. "It must be part of the Silliness that's infecting the Author's Altiverse." / "S wht hppnd? / "You've been disemvoweled," the Amigoid informed her.

1995 October 28, strange days indeed [username], “AA: is that a nerfsword in your pocket, or …”, in bit.listserv.superguy (Usenet), message-ID <Pine.LNX.3.91.951028150058.20293A-100000@sojourn1.sojourn.com>:

Edna [Dame Edna Everage] reveals that she will always outmuscle [Barry] Humphries, disemvowelling his name to reduce it to the interjection "Hmmph!"

2004, Paul Matthew St. Pierre, “Autobiography as Mockery, or Barry Humphries in Mock Turtle”, in A Portrait of the Artist as Australia: L’Œuvre Bizarre de Barry Humphries, Montreal, Que., Kingston, Ont.: McGill-Queen's University Press, →ISBN, page 181:

Another swearing-curtailing device is to allow the taboo word but disenvowel it, so that fuck and cunt become "f-ck" and "c-nt."

2005, Ruth Wajnryb, “Bootleggers and Asterisks”, in Expletive Deleted: A Good Look at Bad Language, New York, N.Y.: Free Press, →ISBN, page 187:

If someone you've disemvowelled comes back and behaves, forgive and forget their earlier gaffes. You're acting in the service of civility, not abstract justice.

2006 December, Douglas K. van Duyne, James A. Landay, Jason I. Hong, “Community Conference”, in The Design of Sites: Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites, 2nd edition, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education, →ISBN, page 145:

Back to our Internet trolling behavior, some comment board moderators have tried to control trolling by "disemvoweling," removing all the vowels from the offending comments of trolls. This punishing practice makes troll comments easier to detect and harder to read, and therefore, less likely to generate the kind of outraged response a troll finds rewarding. Disemvoweling punishes the troll and effectively has decreased the numbers of offensive comments and hijacked comment threads on many message boards.

2011, Ronald Comer, Elizabeth Gould, Psychology Around Us, Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 16:

Write a program that removes all vowels from a file ("disemvowels"). For example, Once upon a time! becomes nc pn tm!. Surprisingly often, the result is still readable; try it on your friends.

2014, Bjarne Stroustrup, Programming Principles and Practice using C++, 2nd edition, Upper Sadde River, N.J.: Addison-Wesley, →ISBN, page 408:

(transitive, sometimes humorous) To remove the vowels from, for example, for the purpose of expurgating offensive words.


Latinity

en-noun

Latinity (countable and uncountable, plural Latinities)

From Latin Latīnitās, from Latin Latīnus (“Latin”).

The banns being published, the next difficulty was to find a bishop who would bless them. One bishop was found, says Buchanan with the severest point of his elegant Latinity, one, the Bishop of Orkney, who preferred the smiles of a court to the light of truth, while others declined the task, and pointed out the unhallowed nature of nuptials with him who had already two spouses alive, and had lately obtained himself to be repudiated by a third on the ground of his own adultery.

1834, Mark Napier, chapter III, in Memoirs of John Napier of Merchiston, His Lineage, Life, and Times, with a History of the Invention of Logarithms, Edinburgh: William Blackwood; London: Thomas Cadell, page 116:

“Well, well,” said the lawyer, when I had quite done, “this is a great epic, a great Odyssey of yours. You must tell it, sir, in a sound Latinity when your scholarship is riper; or in English if you please, though for my part I prefer the stronger tongue. […]

1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC:

Indeed his rendering is so excellent an example of mediæval learning and latinity that, even at the risk of sating the learned reader with too many antiquities, I have made up my mind to give it in fac-simile, together with an expanded version for the benefit of those who find the contractions troublesome.

1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

Girls might infiltrate the clubhouse but men alone remain the teachers and theorists of Latinity.

2012, Barbara Newman, “Ailments of the Tongue”, in London Review of Books, volume 34, number 6:

(uncountable, countable) The quality of a particular person's Latin speech or writing; the Latin language, as an area of study or interest.


bilingualism

bilingualism (countable and uncountable, plural bilingualisms)

At Kingsbridge, the bilingualism of the Irish Republic was evident in the tickets, the station notices, and the neat destination boards on the 10.40 a.m. express to Cork.

1955 May, Rev. A. W. V. Mace, “An Irish Journey—1”, in Railway Magazine, page 297:

The condition of being bilingual; the ability to speak two languages.


unilingualism

Condition of being able to speak only a single language.


translatorese

(derogatory) Stilted or unidiomatic language produced by automated translation.


nahuatlato

nahuatlatos (plural)
naguatato (alternative)

From Spanish nahuatlato, from Nahuatl nāhuatlahtoh.

tranſlated from the Malaye Language, by the King’s Naguatatos, ſo they there call the Interpreters.

1708, Bartholomé Leonardo de Argensola (Spanish), John Stevens (English tr.), The Discovery and Conquest of the Molucco and Philippine Islands, p. 119

In Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza’s 1548 compilation of ordinances, a number deal with the nahuatlatos, prohibiting them from receiving gifts or bribes from Spaniards or Indians, hearing cases in their houses, or acting as procuradores, or soliciters.

1995, Susan Kellogg, Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture, 1500–1700, page 23:

An interpreter in an indigenous language, not necessarily Nahuatl.


hyperpolyglot

One who masters or becomes fluent in many different languages (six or more).


mixed language

A language formed by combining two languages, keeping elements of the grammar of both.


panlingual

On the other hand, however, Linguas scholarly audience could have responded to this ostentatious parade of panlingual' skill as a confirmation of their own erudition.

1998, Jonathan Gil Harris, Foreign bodies and the body politic, page 112:

[…] it is not interlingual translation that betrays the stutterer; it is, rather, panlingual stuttering.

We spoke in a private panlingual gibberish. We were not German or European or English or Canadian; we were flesh detached from time and place.

2007, Stephen Henigan, A Grave in the Air, page 32:

Involving or encompassing all languages.


newspeak

newspeak (usually uncountable, plural newspeaks)

From Newspeak, a word coined by George Orwell. Equivalent to new + speak.

Yet no-one would deny that a form of ‘newspeak’, however altered, is all too prevalent. Where [George] Orwell’s society was governed by the stick, we are offered the carrot. The truncation of the language on ‘Airstrip One’ was a logical response to the harsh social engineering that engendered it. The soothing, delusory world of ‘equality’, of much-touted ‘democracy’, has created a ‘newspeak’ all its own. Rather than shorten the language it is infinitely broadened; instead of curt monosyllables, there are mellifluous, calming phrases, designed to allay suspicions, modify facts and divert one’s attention from difficulties.

1984, Jonathon Green, “Introduction”, in Newspeak: A Dictionary of Jargon, London: Routledge & Kegal Paul plc, ISBN 978-0-7100-9685-2; republished Abingdon, Oxon.; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2014, ISBN 978-0-415-73271-0, page ix

[T]he last stage in the evolution of the Russian literary avant-garde and its final demise was marked by its sharp and growing conflict with the rise of newspeak. The concept of newspeak has been with us now for quite some time. However, it only recently began to be treated as an exponent of a certain cultural vision advanced by sheer and impudent political power. At the same time, it is more than that. Newspeak can be defined as discourse, proper or peculiar to the totalitarian state and transmitted through the manipulative use of language to all sectors and institutions of the state.

1995, Edward Możejko, “Between Symbolist Decline and the Rise of Newspeak: Mapping the Dynamics of the Russian Literary Avant-Garde”, in Christian Berg, Frank Durieux, Geert Lernout, editors, The Turn of the Century: Modernism and Modernity in Literature and the Arts/Le tournant du siècle : Le modernisme et la modernité dans la littérature et les arts (European Cultures; 3), Berlin, New York, N.Y.: Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 327:

[…] Soviet ideology itself may be more productively viewed as the result of conscious attempts to explicate and rationalize assorted discursive strategies, or mechanisms, of newspeak, in much the same way as grammatical rules are invented to describe diverse linguistic practices.

2002, Slava Gerovitch, “The Cold War in Code Words: The Newspeak of Soviet Science”, in From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics, Cambridge, Mass., London: MIT Press, →ISBN, page 47:

Use of ambiguous, misleading, or euphemistic words in order to deceive the listener, especially by politicians and officials.

新話 /新话

use of ambiguous words to deceive listeners


planned language

planned language (plural planned languages)

constructed language
constructed language


plurilingual

en-adj

plurilingual (comparative more plurilingual, superlative most plurilingual)

more plurilingual (comparative)
most plurilingual (superlative)


glossopoeia

/ɡlɑsəʊˈpɪə/

From glosso- (“language”) + -poeia (“making”); coined by J. R. R. Tolkien.

confix

Glossopoeia, which is neither an imitative language nor a creation of names, takes us back to the borderline of the moment when the word has not yet been born, when articulation is no longer a shout but not yet discourse, when repetition is almost impossible, and along with it, language in general: the separation of concept and sound, of signified and signifier, of the pneumatical and the grammatical, the freedom of translation and tradition, the movement of interpretation, the difference between the soul and the body, the master and the slave, God and man, the author and the actor.

1978, Jacques Derrida, translated by Alan Bass, Writing and Difference, published 1990, page 240:

Still more curiously, English offers a second pair of homophones — “hew” and “hew” — with a quite similar range of antonymous meanings, opening the possibility of a glossopoeia of a most cunning and pleasing sort.

2000, International and Area Studies, University of California, Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis, volume 5, page 153:

2007, Carl F. Hostetter, "Languages Invented by Tolkien", In M.C. Drout, ed., The J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment, pp. 332,
In short, we see a movement from language creation as a utilitarian and thus shared endeavor toward glossopoeia that is at once strongly abstract and artistic in pursuing and expressing a private and personal linguistic aesthetic and that is rigorously historical and systematic, susceptible within the fictive construct to the scientific tools of historical philology: an aspect of language creation nearly if not entirely unique to Tolkien.

2009 May 12, Tashi “Cracking the Mayan Code on Nova PBS”, rec.music.classical.guitar, Usenet,
I don't have any idea what you are talking about. I don't equate Glossopoeia with Mathematics, it is the creation of language.

The creation of constructed languages for artistic purposes; language so created.


Balticism

There are some old Balticisms though they are difficult to differentiate from Lithuanian.

1996, Zigmas Zinkevičius, The History of the Lithuanian Language, page 52:

The influence of the Baltic languages on Finnish is evident. For instance, there are about 1.1% of Balticisms in modern Finnish.

2018, Liāna Pliss with Gunita Zariņa, Agrita Puzuka, Agnese Zariņa, Baiba Lāce, Didzis Elferts, Andrey Khrunin, Svetlana Limborska, Jānis Kļoviņš, and Linda Gailīte Piekuse, “Population Genetics of Latvians in the Context of Admixture between North-Eastern European Ethnic Groups”, in Proceedings of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, volume 72, number 3, →DOI, page 132:

A word or other feature originating in a Baltic language that has been borrowed by another language, usually a Slavic or a Finnic one.


world language

English, French and Spanish are often considered world languages.

A language spoken internationally and which is learned by many people as a second language.


colanguage

A language used jointly alongside another language or languages.


lectical

en-adj

lectical (comparative more lectical, superlative most lectical)

more lectical (comparative)
most lectical (superlative)

From lectic + -al, from Ancient Greek λέξις (léxis, “saying, speech; phrase, word”) + Latin -ālis (suffix forming adjectives from nouns or numerals).

der

The lectical order on ^3(A/) is defined by A' < V : <=> 3i : X <,- Y .

1997, Dickson Lukose, Conceptual Structures: Fulfilling Peirce's Dream, →ISBN:

The lectical smallest closed subspace larger than a given subspace S ⊂ A and having weighted density larger than δ is S⊕ ai, where ai is the lexicographically largest attribute which satisfies dense (S⊕ ai)>δ and S ≪i S ⊕ ai.

2008, Tsau Young Lin, Ying Xie, Anita Wasilewska, Data Mining: Foundations and Practice, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, page 40

Next we introduce the lectical order on the set of subsets of M.

2013, Hans-Hermann Bock, Wolfgang Polasek, Data Analysis and Information Systems, →ISBN:


pentalingual

Written in or otherwise expressed through five languages.


pentalingual

A person who understands five languages.


linguaculture

The central research question in this article is: What role does Chinese linguaculture play in English teaching in China?

2012, Martin Wolff, English in China Today at the Harbin Institute of Technology:


wordster

The toiler toils. The wordster words. And you say all your prayers in words. Toil is always alive. But words are dead.

1903 January, H[orace] T[raubel], “Collect”, in Horace Traubel, editor, The Conservator, number 11, Philadelphia, Pa.: Innes & Sons, 200 S. Tenth Street, →OCLC, page 162, column 1:

The style is that of the trained reporter, ready and fluent; the craft of the wordster is here seen at its best.

1923, Flora Warren Seymour, editor, The Step Ladder; a Monthly Journal of Bookly Ascent, volumes 7–8, Cedar Rapids, Iowa: The Bookfellows, →OCLC, page 117:

So long has it been since Charles Cotton was a wit and a wordster that a short biographical notice well may precede any remarks about this book.

1924, Julius Weiss Friend, editor, The Double Dealer, New Orleans, La.: The Double Dealer Publishing Co., →OCLC, page 360, column 1:

At his command, a team of authentically be-kilted wordsters has combed the highlands and islands of Scotland to bring you this, our tribute to a very special country.

1990, Punch: Or The London Charivari, volume 299, London: Punch, →OCLC, page 14:

I know a lie when I hear one, even from a wordster like you.

2002, Adam Davies, The Frog King: A Love Story, New York, N.Y.: Riverhead Books, →ISBN:

One who is skilled at using words; a wordsmith.

Quite how complete or relevant all this information is to professional wordsters remains to be seen, though desktop publishers will find hyphenation rules included […]

1988, Language Technology, Amsterdam: INK International, →OCLC, page 53, column 1:

Wordsters of etymological persuasion also hope to be sitting in the catbird seat when it comes to locating the origins of colorful phrases.

1994, Richard Lederer, Adventures of a Verbivore, New York, N.Y.: Pocket Books, →ISBN, page 5:

It is not easy to analyse the personality of the [London County] Council, but it is a sharply-marked personality. […] It despises the wordster and the tonguester. It is, in short, a big committee rather than a Parliament.

1909, James Douglas, “Spring Gardens”, in Adventures in London, London, New York, N.Y.: Cassell and Company, Limited, →OCLC, page 230:

He was a wordster, a dreamer; there was nothing at the back of his rose-colored ideas.

1919, J[ohn] C[ollis] Snaith, chapter XII, in The Undefeated, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC, page 64:

If [Alexander] Kerensky had been a man of insight and action, instead of being a wordster, if he had joined forces with Korniloff [Lavr Kornilov] instead of betraying him, quite another form of government would have been possible and operative in Russia to-day.

1921, Henry Arthur Jones, “Letter Five: Mr. Wells Invents a New Kind of Honesty”, in My Dear Wells: A Manual for the Haters of England: Being a Series of Letters upon Bolshevism, Collectivism, Internationalism, and the Distribution of Wealth Addressed to Mr. H. G. Wells, 2nd edition, London: Eveleigh Nash & Grayson Ltd., 148, Strand, →OCLC, page 37:

Why should the prospect, however remote, of a communist government in Vietnam cause us to panic. Mr. Menzies' alarm causes no surprise; he lives in the past. In any case, he is a mere wordster, a trifler when it comes to foreign affairs, which have always been his Achilles heel.

1965, Nation, numbers 160–184, Sydney, N.S.W.: Nation, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 145, column 1:

(derogatory) One who uses words instead of actions; a hypocrite, a verbalist.


modern language

en-noun

modern language (plural modern languages)

A human language which is living or recently extinct.


cheirology

The representation of words or letters by use of the fingers


sleeping language

sleeping language (plural sleeping languages)

(in the context of language revival) Extinct


Aztequism

A word or phrase borrowed from the Aztec language.


matrilingual

/mætɹɪˈlɪŋɡwəl/

/ˌmætɹɪˈlɪŋɡwəl/

From matri- (prefix meaning ‘mother’) + lingual (“related to language or linguistics”).

prefix

Indeed, the obstacles in the way of compiling a comprehensive dictionary of the classical language are enormous, when one reflects on the vastness of the surviving literature, the fantastic richness of the language, the diverse matrilingual origins of the writers themselves, and the time and the area over which the language has continued to be written in its present form: for fourteen hundred years, in places as far apart as China and Spain.

1953, G[eorge] M[ichael] Wickens, “Arabic Literature”, in Eric B[ertrand] Ceadel, editor, Literatures of the East, an Appreciation (Wisdom of the East), London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, page 25:

What Dr. Margaret Smith refers to as Ghazăli's 'knowledge of Persian' (Al-Ghazălī, the Mystic, Luzac, 1944, p. 67) was surely a profound matrilingual cast: that he normally thought in Persian can scarcely be doubted, and it may well be that he often composed in that language and then translated into Arabic (cf. infra Section IV and Section V, para, numbered 3).

1956, The Islamic Quarterly, London: Islamic Cultural Centre, →OCLC, page 109, column 1:

As to the style of the Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (p. 7), it is surely not only more complex than "that of the early ḵuṭba", but also more unwieldy than practically everything that followed. This may have been partly due to matrilingual "interference", but clearly he and others were feeling their way towards the new skill of composing written discourse rather than merely recording the written word.

1979 spring, G[eorge] M[ichael] Wickens, “A[lfred] F[elix] L[andon] Beeston, Samples of Arabic Prose in Its Historical Development (a Manual for English-speaking Students), Oxford University Press (for the James Mew Fund) 1977. Pp. 47. Price: £1.80. [book review]”, in Journal of Semitic Studies, volume 24, number 1, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 140:

These ideas became, almost immediately, a commonplace in the celebrations of English that continue to excite matrilingual sentiments.

1991, Richard W[eld] Bailey, “English Abroad”, in Images of English: A Cultural History of the Language, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, →ISBN, page 60:

(rare) Pertaining to one's mother tongue.


wooden language

Of more consequence is the emergence of a phenomen which is perhaps peculiar to the modern world: the phenomenon which the French and Russians call “wooden language,” and which we might call, in honor of Orwell's satire, newspeak.

[1990, Roger Scruton, “Ideologically Speaking”, in Christopher Ricks, Leonard Michaels, editors, The State of the Language, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 126:

Life behind the iron curtain was an education in a certain kind of humour: dark, unsentimental and absurd. It understood that jokes had become shortcuts to the truth – apart from the bonus of laughter, they turned the wooden language of the regime against itself in ways that sincerity could not.

2022 May 20, Patrick McGuinness, “Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov review – the dangers of dwelling in the past”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:

(informal, derogatory) Speech or writing that is overly abstract, vague, metaphorical or pretentious in order to avoid addressing salient issues.


native-speaking

That speaks a language as a first language or mother tongue.


McWord

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-McWord.wav

(slang) A word containing the prefix Mc- that is either an official marketing term for the McDonald's fast food restaurant chain, or a derogatory term indicating a lack of depth or worth by association with McDonald's.

along with any other terms with the prefix

containing Wiktionary's coverage of McWord entries


dictionaryese

/ˈdɪkʃəˌnəɹɪˈiːz/

/ˈdɪkʃəˌnɛɹiˈiz/

From dictionary + -ese (suffix denoting jargon used in a particular context).

af

-ese<pos:suffix denoting jargon used in a particular context>

For a concise dictionary the extent of the German vocabulary dealt with is commendable and fairly searching spot-checks in many fields have shown no serious gaps, but an English reviewer must be forgiven for commenting on the ‘dictionaryese’ of some of the English renderings.

1962, D. F. S. Scott, “Langenscheidts Handwörterbuch Deutsch–Englisch. Langenscheidt’s Concise Dictionary German–English. (Second Edition, Berlin 1960; pp. 672; published in England by Methuen; 17s. 6d.) [book review]”, in The Durham University Journal, volume LIV (New Series, volume XXIII), Durham, County Durham: Senate of the University of Durham, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-06-29, page 86:

'Cause to die' is immediately recognizable as dictionaryese, which is to say that dictionaries do not, in general, honor the condition that definitions must be couched in the syntax of surface English.

1975, Jerry A[lan] Fodor, “The Structure of the Internal Code: Some Linguistic Evidence”, in The Language of Thought, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Y[oung] Crowell Company, →ISBN, page 127:

Such an approach has two immediate advantages: it disposes of the need to present what is not fact as fact; and it goes some way to seeing off the need to employ dictionaryese, the crabbed and clipped prose-style that, in many reference-books, only ossifies its subject-matter.

1981, Justin Wintle, “Introduction”, in Justin Wintle, editor, Makers of Modern Culture, New York, N.Y.: Facts on File, →ISBN, page xvi:

Oxford American’s usage notes are among the best I’ve found: clear, consistent, sensibly prescriptive, and up-to-date (it’s the only dictionary to acknowledge that “nonplussed” is frequently misused to mean “unperturbed”). Its rendering of slang into dictionaryese—“shake one's booty” is defined as “dance energetically”—is a thing of beauty.

2003 December 4, YiLing Chen-Josephson, “Word Up”, in Slate, New York, N.Y.: The Slate Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-03-22:

If I were defining "hella" without using substitutability, I would probably come up with something long-winded and full of dictionaryese, like "to an excessive degree."

2017, Kory Stamper, “Surfboard: On Defining”, in Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, New York, N.Y.: Pantheon Books, →ISBN, page 103:

<https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sodomy> runs down to "Sexual intercourse that is not the union of the genital organs of a man and a woman", but in dictionaryese that /could/ mean one specific sexual intercourse that they're choosing not to describe.

2019 January 14, Robert Carnegie, “Homosexuality is more acceptable to atheists, than theists”, in alt.atheism (Usenet):

(informal) The style of language used in dictionary definitions, characterized by dry, straightforward, and occasionally awkward phrasing.


paucilingual

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-paucilingual.wav

/ˌpɔːsɪˈlɪŋɡwəl/

(rare) Relating to, involving, or knowing few languages.


oligolingual

/ˌɒlɪɡəˈlɪŋɡwəl/

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-oligolingual.wav


oldspeak

en-noun

oldspeak (usually uncountable, plural oldspeaks)

From Oldspeak, a word coined by George Orwell. Equivalent to old + speak.


Pinghua

From the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of Mandarin 平話 /平话 (Pínghuà).

Such readings need to be checked against their pronunciations in Pinghua. We often find that Zhuang readings could equally well come from more recent reading pronunciations in Pinghua, and this means they do not necessarily represent older layers of borrowings.

2004 November 30, Anthony Diller, Jerry Edmondson, Yongxian Luo, The Tai-Kadai Languages, Routledge, →ISBN, page 424:

In the Atlas, Pinghua has received the status of a separate dialect group, which has sparked a number of controversies.

2010, Maria Kurpaska, Chinese Language(s): A Look Through the Prism of The Great Dictionary of Modern Chinese Dialects, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 76:

Nanning Pinghua is a member of the Pinghua (平話) subgroup of Sinitic. There are various accents of Nanning Pinghua spoken in the different suburbs of Nanning; their phonological differences are obvious, but they are mutually intelligible.

2015, Hilary Chappell, Diversity in Sinitic Languages, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, pages 159-160:

A group of Chinese dialects spoken in Guangxi.