encyclopedic

en-adj

encyclopedic (comparative more encyclopedic, superlative most encyclopedic)

more encyclopedic (comparative)
most encyclopedic (superlative)

[p 151] Although separate encyclopedic sections have nothing to do with the dictionary proper, there are no compelling logical reasons for condemning them.
[p 212] Terms derived from names fall into three categories. Some, like Chomskyan, refer to a person and the work done by that person, or to a place or a person from that place (Virginian, Londoner), and should be defined only in relation to the person or place. They are essentially encyclopedic entries and, if the dictionary contains an entry for the person or place in question, could well be run on without a separate definition.
[p 359] The difficulty of distinguishing between lexical units and items in a nomenclature is especially nettlesome in specialized dictionaries, which are by their nature more encyclopedic than general dictionaries.

2001, Sidney I. Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, 2nd ed, Scribner

Thus there are 3751 lexical items covered in total. Taking into account polysemy, there are 4315 separate senses. Of these, 1021 terms are proper nouns. Thus 23.7% of the lexis covered consists of encyclopaedic material.

2018, James Lambert, “Setting the Record Straight: An In-depth Examination of Hobson-Jobson”, in International Journal of Lexicography, volume 31, number 4, →DOI, page 490:

(lexicography) Relating to or containing descriptive information rather than only linguistic or lexical information; about facts and concepts, and not only a word or term; including proper names, biographical and geographical information and illustrations.


possessive

possessive (comparative more possessive, superlative most possessive)

more possessive (comparative)
most possessive (superlative)

From Middle French possessif, from Latin possessivus (“of or pertaining to possession”), from possessiō (“possessing”), from possidēre (“to possess”).

uder

(grammar) Indicating ownership, possession, origin, etc.


possessive

en-noun

possessive (countable and uncountable, plural possessives)

kupu whiwhinga

a word that indicates possession or the possessive case

(grammar) A word used to indicate the possessive case.


middle

From Middle English middel, from Old English middel, middle (“middle, centre, waist”), from Proto-Germanic *midlą, *midilą, *medalą (“middle”), a diminutive of Proto-Germanic *midjō (“middle, midst”) (compare *midjaz (“mid, middle”, adjective)), from Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos (“between, in the middle, middle”). Cognate with West Frisian middel, Dutch middel, German mittel (“middle”, adjective), German Mittel (“middle, means”, noun), Danish middel (“means, agent, medicine; middle/medium”). Related also to Swedish medel (“means, medium”), Icelandic meðal (“means, medicine”). See also mid.


middle

knock someone into the middle of next week

(grammar) Pertaining to the middle voice.


dental

en-adj

dental (comparative more dental, superlative most dental)

more dental (comparative)
most dental (superlative)

Borrowed from Middle French dental or Late Latin dentālis, from dēns (“a tooth”) + -ālis (“-al”, adjectival suffix).

af

dental fricative

(phonetics) Articulated with the tip of the tongue touching the upper front teeth or with the blade of the tongue touching the alveolar ridge, so that the tip of the tongue rests near the teeth.

(phonetics, uncommon) Articulated with the tip or blade of the tongue: coronal.


dental

'Che Normah pronounced the name in the Malay manner, metathetically: Ruperet, the final dental initiated but not exploded.

1958, Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 253:


adverbial

en-adj

adverbial (comparative more adverbial, superlative most adverbial)

more adverbial (comparative)
most adverbial (superlative)

Borrowed from Latin adverbiālis. By surface analysis, adverb + -ial.

And in (123) below, a (bracketed) Adverbial Phrase has undergone WH MOVEMENT:
 (123) (a) [How quickly] will he drink the beer —?
 (123) (b) [How carefully] did he plan his campaign —?
 (123) (c) [How well] did he treat her —?

1988, Andrew Radford, chapter 9, in Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 495:


adverbial

ظَرْف

grammar: word or phrase modifying a verb


term

From Middle English terme, borrowed from Old French terme, from Latin terminus (“a bound, boundary, limit, end; in Medieval Latin, also a time, period, word, covenant, etc.”).
Doublet of terminus and termon. Old English had termen, from the same source.

член

one of the addends in a sum or in another mathematical operation

My wife, after the absence of her terms for seven weeks, gave me hopes of her being with child, but on the last day of the year she hath them again.


absolute superlative

en-noun

absolute superlative (plural absolute superlatives)

degrees of comparison
degrees of comparison

-τατος -τατος#Greek

In Greek: one of the degrees of comparison in an adjective that stresses an exceptional property without making a direct comparison, its closest equivalent in English being a most important letter, a very high mountain or absolutely pure water. It is formed by adding the suffix -τατος (declined) to the adjective's nominative, neuter singular.


addressee

Person is a grammatical property which is overtly manifested in so-called Personal Pronouns: forms which include the speaker (I/we) are said to be ‘first personʼ Pronouns; forms which include the addressee (you) and not the speaker are said to be ‘second personʼ Pronouns; while forms which exclude both speaker and addressee (he/she/it/they) are ‘third personʼ Pronouns.

1988, Andrew Radford, chapter 6, in Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 305:

(linguistics) A person or entity to whom discourse is directed, or the words referring to such an entity.

adresat

grammar term for words indicating who or what the speaker is addressing


converse

From Latin conversus (“turned around”), past participle of converto (“turn about”).

converse antonym
converse antonym#English

relational antonym
relational antonym#English

(semantics) One of a pair of terms that name or describe a relationship from opposite perspectives; converse antonym; relational antonym.


media

Learned borrowing from Latin media, the feminine nominative of medius (“middle”, adjective), from Proto-Italic *meðjos, from Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos (“between”). In the sense of a unit of dry measure, via Spanish media. Doublet of medium, medio, and mediate.

(linguistics, dated) A voiced stop consonant.


Germanic

/d͡ʒɜːˈmæn.ɪk/

Learned borrowing from Latin germānicus.

(linguistics) The early, undocumented ancestral language from which other Germanic languages developed, such as Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, Frisian, English, German, Faroese, Icelandic, Yiddish, Norwegian and Swedish.

Germaans

early language — see also Proto-Germanic

(linguistics) The group of Indo-European languages that developed from (Ur-)Germanic.


Germanic

en-adj

Germanic (comparative more Germanic, superlative most Germanic)

more Germanic (comparative)
most Germanic (superlative)

/d͡ʒɜːˈmæn.ɪk/

a Germanic language

(linguistics) Relating to the language or group of languages known as Germanic.

جَرْمَانِيّ

relating to the language or group of languages known as Germanic


flexion

en-noun

flexion (countable and uncountable, plural flexions)

Borrowed from Latin flexiō, possibly via French.

(grammar, dated) The variation of words by declension, comparison, or conjugation; inflection.


raise

en-verb

raise (third-person singular simple present raises, present participle raising, simple past and past participle raised)

raises (present singular third-person)
raising (participle present)
raised (participle past)
raised (past)

From Middle English reysen, raisen, reisen, from Old Norse reisa (“to raise”), from Proto-Germanic *raisijaną, *raizijaną (“to raise”), causative form of Proto-Germanic *rīsaną (“to rise”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁rey- (“to rise, arise”). According to Kroonen (2013), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃er- (“to stir, rise”).
Cognate with Old English rāsian (“to explore, examine, research”), Old English rīsan (“to seize, carry off”), Old English rǣran (“to raise”). Doublet of rear.

whakahī

Referring to lifting the pitch of a musical note

hāpai

Of lifting an object to a higher elevation

hī

Refers to raising an eyebrow in scepticism

aradan qaldırmaq

(military) to remove or break up (a blockade); to relinquish (a siege), or cause this to be done

raise oneself up by one's own bootstraps

(linguistics, transitive, of a verb) To extract (a subject or other verb argument) out of an inner clause.

(linguistics, transitive, of a vowel) To produce a vowel with the tongue positioned closer to the roof of the mouth.


fix

en-verb

fix (third-person singular simple present fixes, present participle fixing, simple past and past participle fixt or fixed)

fixes (present singular third-person)
fixing (participle present)
fixt (participle past)
fixt (past)
fixed (participle past)
fixed (past)
fix (infinitive)

→ Dutch: fixen, fiksen

From Middle English fixen, borrowed from Old French *fixer (attested only as ficher, fichier; > English fitch), from fixe (“fastened; fixed”), from Latin fīxus (“immovable; steady; stable; fixed”), from fīgō (“to drive in; stick; fasten”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeygʷ- (“to jab; stick; set”). Related to dig.

der

The function f#x3A;#x5C;mathbb#x7B;R#x7D;#x5C;to#x5C;mathbb#x7B;R#x7D;#x3B;f(x)#x3A;#x3D;4x-3 fixes the point 1#x5C;in#x5C;mathbb#x7B;R#x7D;, since f(1)#x3D;4(1)-3#x3D;1.

(transitive, mathematics, semantics) To map (a point or subset) to itself.


blend

From Middle English blenden, either from Old English blandan, blondan, ġeblandan, ġeblendan or from Old Norse blanda (“to blend, mix”) (which was originally a strong verb with the present-tense stem blend; compare blendingr (“a blending, a mixture; a half-breed”)), whence also Danish blande, or from a blend of the Old English and Old Norse terms; both ultimately from Proto-Germanic *blandaną (“to blend; mix; combine”). Compare Middle Dutch blanden (“to mix”), Gothic 𐌱𐌻𐌰𐌽𐌳𐌰𐌽 (blandan), Old Church Slavonic блєсти (blesti, “to go astray”).

cog

Meronym: splinter

Blends, also known as portmanteau words, are not an original part of English. That is, none occur in Old or Middle English, nor even in Elizabethan English, with the earliest known example being the rare and now obsolete term tomaxe, a blend of tomahawk and axe.

2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 10:

(linguistics) A word formed by combining two other words; a grammatical contamination, portmanteau word.


tenor

en-noun

tenor (countable and uncountable, plural tenors)

From Middle English tenour, from Anglo-Norman tenour, from Old French tenor (“substance, contents, meaning, sense; tenor part in music”), from Latin tenor (“course, continuance; holder”), from teneō (“I hold”). In music, from the notion of the one who holds the melody, as opposed to the countertenor.

der

(linguistics) The subject in a metaphor to which attributes are ascribed.


cumulative

en-adj

cumulative (comparative more cumulative, superlative most cumulative)

more cumulative (comparative)
most cumulative (superlative)

From cumulate + -ive. Compare also French cumulatif, Italian cumulativo and Spanish cumulativo.

cumulative conjunctions like and, both…and and as well as

That is formed by an accumulation of successive additions.

(linguistics) Adding one statement to another.

kapcsolatos

(linguistics) adding one statement to another


exclusive

exclusive (comparative more exclusive, superlative most exclusive)

more exclusive (comparative)
most exclusive (superlative)

From Latin exclūsīvus, from excludere (“to shut out, exclude”), from ex- (“out”) + variant form of verb claudere (“to close, shut”).

The pronoun in "We're going to a party later, but you aren't invited" is an exclusive "we".

(linguistics) Of or relating to the first-person plural pronoun when excluding the person being addressed.


exclusive

(grammar) A word or phrase that restricts something, such as only, solely, or simply.


govern

en-verb

govern (third-person singular simple present governs, present participle governing, simple past and past participle governed)

governs (present singular third-person)
governing (participle present)
governed (participle past)
governed (past)

From Middle English governen, governe, from Anglo-Norman and Old French governer, guverner, from Latin gubernō, from Ancient Greek κυβερνάω (kubernáō, “I steer, drive, govern”).

der

Coordinate term: agree

(transitive, grammar) To require that a certain preposition, grammatical case, etc. be used with a word; sometimes used synonymously with collocate.

vaatia

grammar: to require that a certain preposition, grammatical case, etc. be used with a word


transformation

en-noun

transformation (countable and uncountable, plural transformations)

Borrowed from Middle French, from Ecclesiastical Latin trānsfōrmātiō.
Morphologically transform + -ation

(linguistics) A rule that systematically converts one syntactic form into another; a sentence derived by such a rule.

transformació

linguistics: rule that systematically converts one syntactic form into another


relative

[ˈɹɛl.ə.ɾɪv]

From Middle French relatif, from Late Latin relātīvus, from Latin relātus, perfect passive participle of referō (“to carry back, to ascribe”), from re- (“again”) + ferō (“to bear or carry”).

نِسْبِيّ

conditional; depending on something else

The words “big” and “small” are relative.

(grammar) Depending on an antecedent; comparative.

vonatkozó

grammar: depending on an antecedent; comparative


relative

[ˈɹɛl.ə.ɾɪv]

(linguistics) A type of adjective that inflects like a relative clause, rather than a true adjective, in certain Bantu languages.


coverb

(grammar) Any of a class of words in various languages including Chinese and Hungarian whose function is analogous to the cases, prepositions, and postpositions of other languages.


preverb

(grammar) A separable verb prefix or a particle that precedes a verb.

(grammar) Any of a class of words in the Chinese language whose function is analogous to the cases, prepositions, and postpositions of other languages.

(grammar) A verbal prefix in the Algonquin languages whose function is analogous to the adjective of other languages.


connective

From connect + -ive, modeled after French connectif, from New Latin connectivus, from connectō (“I connect”); compare connect, connexive, connectivum, connection.

(grammar) A word used to connect words, clauses and sentences, most commonly applied to conjunctions.


gentile

LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-gentile.wav

Borrowed from French gentil (“gentile”), from Latin gentīlis (“of or belonging to the same people or nation”), morphologically from gēns (“clan; tribe; people, family”) + adjective suffix -īlis (“-ile”). Doublet of gentle, genteel, and jaunty. See also gens, gender, genus, and generation.

der

Gentile verbs are so denominated because derived from gentile nouns, or from proper nouns, or adnouns: they relate to countries, and to places generally, or to men: the following are examples: Greecise, Latinise, Anglicise, […] Aristotelise, Sophoclise, Shakesperianise. Gentile verbs in their radical form terminate in ise, with some few exceptions in fy, ate, and in their past participle with ised, being all of the first conjugation: they are formed by annexing ise to a gentile noun or to a proper substantive or to a proper adjective.

1825, Samuel Oliver Jun., A General, Critical Grammar of the Inglish Language; on a System Novel, and Extensive: […], London: Published, for the author, by Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, →OCLC, page 115:

Gentile Nouns. […] To this form belong our gentile nouns Englishman, Welshman, Scotchman, Irishman. These nouns are represented in Irish by adjectives or nouns of the form (1+ac): Alban-ac, Scotchman.

1854, William Barnes, “Etymology”, in A Philological Grammar: Grounded upon English, and Formed from a Comparison of More Than Sixty Languages. […], London: John Russell Smith, […], →OCLC, page 71:

(grammar) Of a part of speech such as an adjective, noun or verb: relating to a particular city, nation or country.


gentile

Gentiles are denominative nouns denoting belonging to or coming from a particular country, nation, or city. Gentiles are formed from proper nouns by secondary suffixes.

1956, Herbert Weir Smyth, Gordon M. Messing, Greek Grammar, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 233:

(grammar) A noun derived from a proper noun which denotes something belonging to or coming from a particular city, nation, or country.


back-formation

en-noun

back-formation (countable and uncountable, plural back-formations)

Coined by Scottish lexicographer and philologist James Murray in 1889; from back- + formation.

coin

(uncountable, linguistics) The process by which a new word is formed from an older word by interpreting the former as a derivative of the latter, often by removing a morpheme (real or perceived) from the older word, such as the verb burgle, formed by removing -ar (perceived as an agent-noun suffix) from burglar.


NP

en-noun

NP (countable and uncountable, plural NPs)

(linguistics) Initialism of noun phrase.


cannibalism

cannibalism (usually uncountable, plural cannibalisms)

(linguistics) In speech, the occurrence of one word eliding part or all of the next word, because the syllables are the same. For example, "Look, an MIT shirt" for "Look, an MIT T-shirt".


diaeresis

/daɪˈɛɹɪsɪs/

/daɪˈɪəɹɪsɪs/

/daɪˈɛɹəsɪs/

From Late Latin diaeresis, from Ancient Greek διαίρεσις (diaíresis, “division, split”), from διά (diá, “apart”) + αἱρέω (hairéō, “I take”).

der

(linguistics, prosody) Distraction; the separation of a vowel, often a diphthong, into two distinct syllables.

dierezo

separation of a vowel into two distinct syllables

(prosody) A natural break in rhythm when a word ends at the end of a metrical foot, in a line of verse.

(linguistics, prosody) Hiatus; the occurrence of separate vowel sounds in adjacent syllables without an intervening consonant.


postposition

(grammar) A word that has the same purpose as a preposition but comes after the noun.

կապ

(grammar) words that come after the noun


postposition

en-verb

postposition (third-person singular simple present postpositions, present participle postpositioning, simple past and past participle postpositioned)

postpositions (present singular third-person)
postpositioning (participle present)
postpositioned (participle past)
postpositioned (past)

Nonetheless, PPs in my dataset not only make up the bulk of the non-clausal postpositionings, but they are also postpositioned at a relatively high rate, particularly in comparison to adverbs, the second most frequent form.

2020, Shannon Dubenion-Smith, “A typology of non-clausal postpositioning in German dialects”, in Janet Zhiqun Xing, editor, A Typological Approach to Grammaticalization and Lexicalization: East Meets West (Trends in Linguistics; 327), Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, →DOI, →ISBN, page 245:

(grammar) To be placed after a the word that it modifies.


positive degree

(grammar) That state of an adjective or adverb indicating simple quality, without comparison or relation to increase or diminution; as in wise, noble.

shkalla pohore

that state of an adjective or adverb indicating simple quality, without comparison


perfect tense

կատարյալ

verb form indicating that an action has been completed

A verb form indicating that an action or state has been completed at the present time, in the past, or shall be completed in the future.

Often, specifically, the present perfect tense as distinguished from the past perfect and future perfect tenses.


fragment

From Late Middle English fragment, from Latin fragmentum (“a fragment, remnant”), from frangō (“I break”) + -mentum.

der

(grammar) A sentence not containing a subject or a predicate; a sentence fragment.


agential

en-adj

agential (comparative more agential, superlative most agential)

more agential (comparative)
most agential (superlative)

Even if the suffix be formally identical with the agential suffix, it has not the same function.

1918, Henry Bradley, A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, volume IX, page 922, column 2:


agential

Semantically, a majority of agentials refer to avian vocalization. Examples are: screamer, whistler, warbler, trumpeter, and the suffixless chat.

(linguistics) An affix that forms agent nouns.


parse

en-verb

parse (third-person singular simple present parses, present participle parsing, simple past and past participle parsed)

parses (present singular third-person)
parsing (participle present)
parsed (participle past)
parsed (past)

Possibly from Middle English pars (“parts, shares; parts of speech, grammar”), from Old French pars (plural of part (“part, portion, share”)), from Latin pars (“part, piece, share”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“to carry forth; to sell”).

разобра́ть

синтакси́чески OR граммати́чески

(linguistics, transitive, intransitive) To resolve (a sentence, etc.) into its elements, pointing out the several parts of speech, and their relation to each other by agreement or government; to analyze and describe grammatically.

This sentence doesn't parse.

(computing, linguistics, intransitive) Of a string of code or text, sentence, etc.: to conform to rules of grammar, to be syntactically valid.

jäsentyä

(computing, linguistics) to conform to rules of grammar


parse

The parse will fail if the program contains an unrecognised keyword.

(computing, linguistics) An act of parsing; a parsing.

ана́лиз

граммати́ческий OR синтакси́ческий

разбо́р

граммати́ческий OR синтакси́ческий

This parse is incorrect and indicates a fault in the parser.

(computing, linguistics) The result of such an act; a parsing.


agglutinate

From Latin agglūtinātus, past participle of agglūtinare, adglūtināre (“to glue or cement to a thing”), from ad (“to”) + glūtināre (“to glue”), from glūten (“paste, glue”).

an agglutinate language

an agglutinate family of languages

(linguistics) Consisting of root words combined but not materially altered as to form or meaning.

agglutinoiva

linguistics: consisting of root words combined with affixes


agglutinate

en-verb

agglutinate (third-person singular simple present agglutinates, present participle agglutinating, simple past and past participle agglutinated)

agglutinates (present singular third-person)
agglutinating (participle present)
agglutinated (participle past)
agglutinated (past)

(linguistics) To form through agglutination.

agglutinoida

linguistics: to form through agglutination


nonce word

From for the nonce and word. Coined by James Murray, the influential first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

(lexicography) A word invented for the occasion.

James Murray (lexicographer)
Oxford English Dictionary
nonce word


conlang

LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-conlang.wav

The noun is a blend of constructed + language, while the verb is derived from the noun. By surface analysis, con- (“constructed”) + lang (“language”).

surf

The Klingon language is a conlang created for use in the Star Trek franchise.

You might be familiar with more a priori conlangs than you think: The Klingon language from the television series "Star Trek," the Na'vi language from the movie "Avatar," and the Dothraki language from the television series "Game of Thrones" are all examples of a priori languages.

2012 October 31, Laura Wright, “UT Language Creation Society invites students to learn origins of newer languages”, in The Daily Texan, Austin, Tex.: Texas Student Media, University of Texas at Austin, published 8 April 2013, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2020-08-14:

constructed language
constructed language#English

(linguistics, colloquial) Alternative form of constructed language (“a human language consciously devised by an individual or a small group, as opposed to having naturally evolved as a natural language”)


conlang

en-verb

conlang (third-person singular simple present conlangs, present participle conlanging, simple past and past participle conlanged)

conlangs (present singular third-person)
conlanging (participle present)
conlanged (participle past)
conlanged (past)

I've been conlanging since I was nine years old.

Brithenig was conlanged with the purpose of looking how Welsh might have developed if it were a Romance language.

constructed language
constructed language

(transitive, intransitive, linguistics) To create or work on a conlang (constructed language).


onset

General American, Midland US, Southern US

From on- + set. Compare Old English onsettan (“to impose; oppress, bear down”).

cog

Holonym: syllable

(phonology) The initial portion of a syllable, preceding the syllable nucleus.

atako

(phonology) initial portion of a syllable


defective verb

The verb can is defective in most English dialects, as it lacks an infinitive.

(grammar) A verb with an incomplete conjugation; for example, one that can only be conjugated in certain persons and numbers.


performance

en-noun

performance (countable and uncountable, plural performances)

→ Albanian: performancë

→ Catalan: performance

→ Danish: performance

desctree

→ French: performance
→ Turkish: performans

→ German: Performance

→ Italian: performance

→ Japanese: パフォーマンス (pafōmansu)

→ Portuguese: performance

→ Spanish: performance

→ Swedish: performance

From Middle English parfourmaunce; equivalent to perform + -ance.

(linguistics) The actual use of language in concrete situations by native speakers of a language, as opposed to the system of linguistic knowledge they possess (competence), cf. linguistic performance.


folk etymology

en-noun

folk etymology (countable and uncountable, plural folk etymologies)

English from the 1880s (Abram Smythe Palmer, 1882), a calque of German Volksetymologie (1820s, in 1821 as Volks-Etymologie in J. A. Schmeller's Die Mundarten Bayerns grammatisch dargestellt).

Many English folk etymologies involve backronyms.

It is not improbable that, in some locality where tram-roads were a novelty, their name may have been associated in folk-etymology or by pre-scientific etymologers with that of the engineer.

1926, James A.H. Murray, A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, volume X, part I, page 248, column 1:

He even sharked up a false or "folk" etymology in which saunter is made to derive from sainte terre, making the saunterer a crusader.

1986, Robert Richardson, Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, Berkeley: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 237:

A misunderstanding of the etymology of a word based on an inexpert analysis; an etymology that incorrectly explains the origin of a word based on the inadequate judgement of a common speaker of the language instead of etymological expertise.


proclitic

[pɹəʉˈklɪɾ.ɪk]

From Ancient Greek προκλίνω (proklínō, “to lean forward”).

der

In dialectal or poetic English, the article the or preposition to can become a proclitic, t'.

(linguistics) A clitic that joins with the following word phonetically, graphically, or both.

مُلْحَق

clitic which joins with the following word


conservative

en-adj

conservative (comparative more conservative, superlative most conservative)

more conservative (comparative)
most conservative (superlative)

From Middle French conservatif, from Latin cōnservō (“to preserve”). Equivalent to conserve + -ative.

While innovative in its verbal system, Sardinian is the most conservative Romance language in its vocabulary and phonology.

(linguistics) Having few changes relative to an older form, especially in comparison to related varieties.

conservateur

linguistics: having few changes relative to an older form


clitic

From Ancient Greek κλιτικός (klitikós, “inflexional”).

der

In fact, even within the northern Italian dialects, subject clitics do not constitute a syntactically uniform class, as has been convincingly argued in Poletto's work.

1997, Raffaella Zanuttini, Negation and Clausal Structure, Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax, page 29

In Macedonian, clitic-doubling is a fully-fledged phenomenon. The Macedonian Dat and Acc pronominal clitics, which originate in agreement phrases and move to preverbal position,¹⁰ where they cluster with other clausal clitics, are on their way to becoming mere case markers, which formally distinguish direct and indirect objects from subjects.

2006, Olga Mišeska Tomić, Balkan Sprachbund Morpho-Syntactic Features, page 242:

Here, we will see that they also have problems with overt pronouns, especially object clitics, whose emergence is more delayed than in typically developing children.

2009, Philippe Prévost, The Acquisition of French, Language Acquisition and Language Disorders: 51, page 196

(linguistics) A morpheme that functions like a word, but never appears as an independent word, instead being always attached to a following or preceding word (or, in some cases, within a surrounding word).


positive

en-adj

positive (comparative more positive, superlative most positive)

more positive (comparative)
most positive (superlative)

From Old French positif, from Latin positivus, from the past participle stem of ponere (“to place”). Compare posit.

‘Better’ is an irregular comparative of the positive form ‘good’.

(grammar) Describing the primary sense of an adjective, adverb or noun; not comparative, superlative, augmentative nor diminutive.

(grammar) Describing a verb that is not negated, especially in languages which have distinct positive and negative verb forms, e.g., Finnish.


positive

(grammar) A degree of comparison of adjectives and adverbs.

(grammar) An adjective or adverb in the positive degree.


enclitic

From Late Latin encliticus, from Ancient Greek ἐγκλιτικός (enklitikós, “inclined towards”), from ἐγκλίνειν (enklínein, “lean on”), from ἐν (en, “upon”) + κλίνειν (klínein, “to lean, incline”).

der

The English possessive 's is an enclitic.

(linguistics) A clitic that joins with the preceding word phonetically, graphically, or both.

مُتَّصِل

clitic which joins with the preceding word


personal

en-adj

personal (comparative more personal, superlative most personal)

more personal (comparative)
most personal (superlative)

From Middle English personal, personele, from Anglo-Norman personel, personal, personell, Old French personal, personel, from Late Latin persōnālis (“of a person, personly”), equivalent to person + -al. Doublet of personnel.

der

(grammar) Of a noun or pronoun, having reference particular to humans and other entities having personality such as a named animal, a deity, a personification, etc.

a personal pronoun

(grammar) Related to grammatical first, second, etc. persons.


ʜ

(lexicography) Used in the digraphs ⟨ᴄʜ ᴋʜ sʜ ᴛʜ ᴛ͟ʜ ᴢʜ⟩ for the sounds /t͡ʃ, x, ʃ, θ, ð, ʒ/.

(lexicography) Indicates the Scottish or unassimilated German /x/ – e.g. \lôʜ\ for loch or \bâʜ\ for Bach.


ʏ

(lexicography) Indicates IPA [y, ʏ] in unassimilated French or German loans.


ɶ

(lexicography) Indicates IPA [ø, œ] in unassimilated French or German loans.


ʀ

(lexicography) Indicates non-English R sounds (e.g. IPA [r, ʁ]) in unassimilated loans.


ɴ

(lexicography) Indicates nasal vowels in unassimilated French loans, e.g. \văɴ blâɴ\ for vin blanc.

(lexicography) Used in the digraph ⟨ɴɢ⟩ for the /ŋ/ sound.


ʉ

+ r

(lexicography) An element of the digraph ʉr, a dictionary transcription for the NURSE vowel


Old English

(linguistics, history) The ancestor language of Modern English, also called Anglo-Saxon, spoken in most of Britain from about 400 to 1100.


ə

(superscript ⟨ᵊ⟩) optional schwa, e.g. \băt′ᵊl\ for battle.

(superscript ⟨ᵊ⟩) French final schwa, as in \bᴀstôn′yᵊ\ for Bastogne.

(lexicography) schwa, e.g. \sō′fə\ for sofa.


patronymic

/ˌpætɹəˈnɪmɪk/

From Ancient Greek πατήρ (patḗr, “father”) + ὄνυμα (ónuma, “name”) (a variant form of ὄνομα (ónoma, “name”)). Also patronym + -ic, from patri- + -onym.

According to the applicant, for many years she had been living as part of a family with her stepfather, mother and half-brother and wanted to associate herself more closely with them by taking the surname of her stepfather and also a patronymic derived from his forename.
On 24 March 2004 the applicant lodged a request with the Civil Status Registration Office in Bila Tserkva (hereinafter “the Registration Office”) seeking to change her patronymic from Volodymyrivna (Володимирівна) to Yuriyivna (Юріївна).
By a letter of 27 March 2004 the Registration Office refused the applicant’s request, referring to the Rules on Civil Status Registration in Ukraine, approved by the Ministry of Justice, which provided that the patronymic of a physical person could only be changed in the event of a change of forename by his or her father.
On 23 April 2004 the applicant challenged this refusal in the Bila Tserkva Local Court. She complained that her patronymic, along with her forename and family name, was part of her full name and she had the right to change it. She maintained that the refusal violated her constitutional rights, was unconstitutional and was not based on law. She further contended that she had good reasons for changing her patronymic - to disassociate herself from her biological father and associate herself more closely with her stepfather and half-brother.

2013 May 16, European Court of Human Rights, Garnaga v. Ukraine, number 20390/07, marginal 7–10:

(by extension) A name acquired from one's father's, grandfather's or earlier (male) ancestor's first name. Some cultures use a patronymic where other cultures use a surname or family name; other cultures (like Russia) use both a patronymic and a surname.


present

From Middle English present, from Old French present, from Latin praesent-, praesens, present participle of praeesse (“to be present”), from Latin prae- (“pre-”) + esse (“to be”).


mater lectionis

en-noun

mater lectionis (plural matres lectionis)

Borrowed from New Latin māter lēctiōnis (literally “mother of reading”), calque of Medieval Hebrew אֵם קְרִיאָה (ʾēm qərîʾā).

der

אֵם קְרִיאָה

(phonology) A consonant letter used to represent a vowel sound in Semitic scripts.

أُمّ قِرَاءَة

consonant used to represent a vowel sound


septet

The Lindsey Septet performs at Carnegie Hall this evening.

A group of seven, particularly
(music) A group of seven musicians.

A group of seven, particularly
A group of seven musicians.

[W]hoso rhymes a sonnet pays a tax, / Who paints a landscape dips brush at his cost, / Who scores a septett true for strings and wind / Mulcted must be—else how should I impose / Properly, attitudinize aright, / Did such conflicting claims as these divert / Hohenstiel-Schwangau from observing me?

1871 December, Robert Browning, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society, London: Smith, Elder and Co., →OCLC, page 124:

(music) A composition for a group of seven musicians.

szeptett

musical composition for seven instruments or seven voices

A group of seven, particularly
(poetry) A set of seven lines.

A group of seven, particularly
A set of seven lines.


bilabial

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

"Oh, yes. He talks a lot about phonemes and semantemes and bilabial fricatives. He has a van with recording apparatus in it. He's a good chap."

1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 545:


bilabial

(phonetics) A speech sound articulated with both lips.

երկշրթնային

a speech sound articulated with both lips


autonomous

en-adj

autonomous (comparative more autonomous, superlative most autonomous)

more autonomous (comparative)
most autonomous (superlative)

/ɔːˈtɒnəməs/

Self-governing. Intelligent, sentient, self-aware, thinking, feeling, governing independently.

Though Cade has for years reported on the development of autonomous vehicles, test drives usually have so-called safety drivers who ride along and can take over in case something goes wrong.

2022 April 10, Soumya Karlamangla, “Behind the Story: Navigating San Francisco in a Driverless Car”, in The New York Times:

Acting on one's own or independently; of a child, acting without being governed by parental or guardian rules.

(Celtic linguistics, of a verb form) Used with no subject, indicating an unknown or unspecified agent; used in similar situations as the passive in English (the difference being that the theme in the English passive construction is the subject, while in the Celtic autonomous construction the theme is the object and there is no subject).


conjecture

en-noun

conjecture (countable and uncountable, plural conjectures)

/kənˈd͡ʒɛk.t͡ʃɚ/

From Old French, from Latin coniectūra (“a guess”), from coniectus, perfect passive participle of cōniciō (“throw or cast together; guess”), from con- (“together”) + iaciō (“throw, hurl”); see jet. Compare adjective, eject, inject, project, reject, subject, object, trajectory.

(mathematics, linguistics) A statement likely to be true based on available evidence, but which has not been formally proven.


oblique

en-adj

oblique (comparative obliquer, superlative obliquest)

obliquer (comparative)
obliquest (superlative)

From Middle French oblique, from Latin oblīquus (also spelled oblīcus) (“slanting, sideways, indirect, envious”).

uder

(grammar) Pertaining to the oblique case (non-nominative).

függő

grammar: pertaining to the oblique case (non-nominative)

(grammar, of speech or narration) Indirect; employing the actual words of the speaker but as related by a third person, having the first person in pronoun and verb converted into the third person and adverbs of present time into the past, etc.


plosive

(phonetics) Sound produced from opening a previously closed oral passage.


plosive

en-adj

plosive (comparative more plosive or plosiver, superlative most plosive or plosivest)

more plosive (comparative)
plosiver (comparative)
most plosive (superlative)
plosivest (superlative)

(phonetics) Produced from opening a previously closed oral passage.

избушен

produced from opening a previously closed oral passage


mute

From Middle English muet, from Anglo-Norman muet, moet, Middle French muet, from mu (“dumb, mute”) + -et, remodelled after Latin mūtus.

(phonetics, now obsolete) A stopped consonant; a stop.


dentolabial

(phonetics) articulated with the upper lip and lower teeth


linguolabial

(phonetics) articulated with the tongue and the upper lip.


linguolabial

(phonetics) A speech sound that is articulated with the tongue and the upper lip.


past

From Middle English, past participle of passen (“to pass, to go by”), whence Modern English pass.


past

past (comparative more past, superlative most past)

more past (comparative)
most past (superlative)

past tense

(grammar) Of a tense, expressing action that has already happened or a previously-existing state.

minulý

grammar: expressing action that has already happened


ŭ

(lexicography) A dictionary transcription for the STRUT vowel


bidental

Finally, a position of almost bidental contact can be a paralinguistic voice qualifier or secondary articulation we should acknowledge as a dentalization, that is, the articulation of vowels and consonants 'through one's teeth', which can make the labial kinesic component of normal articulation be still present and vary from lip rounding or protrusion with close front vowels to horizontal distension with close back vowels.

1993, Fernando Poyatos, Paralanguage: A linguistic and interdisciplinary approach to interactive speech and sounds:

dental percussives, produced by clicking maxillary and mandibular teeth together at different speeds, but typically as a bidental chatter, that is, in a repeated rapid way (as in chattering from cold or fear); with bidental percussives resonating in the oral cavity musical notes can be played up and down the scale in various keys.

2002, Fernando Poyatos, Nonverbal Communication Across Disciplines:

The convention for transcribing bidental fricatives, suggested in the expIPA chart, uses the appropriate glottal fricative symbol with a dental diacritic both above and below the symbol.

2013, Nigel Hewlett, An Introduction to the Science of Phonetics:

(phonetics) articulated with both the upper and lower teeth.


OED

(linguistics) Initialism of Oxford English Dictionary.


barrier

From Middle English barryer, barrere, barryȝer, from Old French barriere (compare French barrière), from Old French barre (“bar”).

(grammar) A node (in government and binding theory) said to intervene between other nodes A and B if it is a potential governor for B, c-commands B, and does not c-command A.


uvular

(phonetics) Of a sound, articulated with the uvula.


uvular

(phonetics) A sound articulated with the uvula.


Proto-Indo-European

/ˌpɹəʊ̯təʊ̯ˌɪndə(ʊ̯)ˌjʊə̯ɹəˈpiːən/

/ˌpɹoʊ̯toʊ̯ˌɪndoʊ̯ˌjʊɹəˈpi.ən/

The word mother comes from Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr.

The plural English word brethren and the Farsi word that is pronounced as 'baradaran' both come from the same Proto-Indo-European root word.

(linguistics, uncountable) The reconstructed ancestor language or protolanguage of the Indo-European family of languages, which includes most European, Iranian, and Indian languages.

հնդեվրոպական նախալեզու

ancestor language of most European and Indian languages


Proto-Indo-European

/ˌpɹəʊ̯təʊ̯ˌɪndə(ʊ̯)ˌjʊə̯ɹəˈpiːən/

/ˌpɹoʊ̯toʊ̯ˌɪndoʊ̯ˌjʊɹəˈpi.ən/

(anthropology, countable) A person who spoke the Proto-Indo-European language.


Proto-Indo-European

/ˌpɹəʊ̯təʊ̯ˌɪndə(ʊ̯)ˌjʊə̯ɹəˈpiːən/

/ˌpɹoʊ̯toʊ̯ˌɪndoʊ̯ˌjʊɹəˈpi.ən/

(linguistics, anthropology) Of or pertaining to the Proto-Indo-European language, or the people who spoke it.

նախահնդեվրոպական

pertaining to the Proto-Indo-European language, or the people who spoke it — see also Indo-European


selection

en-noun

selection (countable and uncountable, plural selections)

From Latin sēlēctiō (“the act of choosing out, selection”), from sēlēctus, perfect passive participle of sēligō (“choose out, select”), from sē- (“apart”) + legō (“gather, select”).

der

(linguistics) The ability of predicates to determine the semantic content of their arguments. ᵂᵖ


conspiracy

en-noun

conspiracy (countable and uncountable, plural conspiracies)

From Middle English conspiracie, from Anglo-Norman conspiracie, from Latin cōnspīrātiō. Doublet of conspiration.

That is, further exploration of phonological systems of various languages may turn up evidence motivating conspiracies that have been regarded thus far as impossible.[…]This study of labial palatalization conspiracy is a contribution to the 'too many solutions'/'too few data' problem.

2014, Jerzy Rubach, “Soft labial conspiracy in Kurpian”, in Journal of Linguistics, volume 50, number 1:

(linguistics) A situation in which different phonological or grammatical rules lead to similar or related outcomes.

sameswering

act of working in secret to obtain some goal


sobriquet

Borrowed from French sobriquet (“nickname”), from Middle French soubriquet (“a chuck under the chin”).

der

“The Bard” is a sobriquet of English playwright William Shakespeare.

The sobriquet of Johnny Appleseed attached to him, though his real name was Chapman, in consequence of his being ever engaged in gathering and planting appleseed and cultivating nurseries of apple trees.

1862, A. Banning Norton, (Please provide the book title or journal name):

They turned out to be speedy machines and earned the sobriquet "Greyhounds", giving excellent performances on the Exeter run.

1951 November, David R. Webb, “The Drummond 4-4-0 Locomotives”, in Railway Magazine, page 774:

A familiar name for a person or thing; a nickname (sometimes assumed by the person, but often given by others), that is descriptive.


pharyngeal

→ New Latin: pharyngeālis

/fəˈɹɪn.d͡ʒəl/

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

From Late Latin pharyngeus + -al, from pharynx (“the pharynx”) + -eus (adjectival suffix).

af

(phonetics) Articulated with the pharynx; a term usually describing a consonant which is articulated by the rear area of the tongue being raised to below the region between the uvula and the pharyngeal wall. The term cannot apply to a plosive or stop consonant.


pharyngeal

/fəˈɹɪn.d͡ʒəl/

pharyngeal consonant
pharyngeal consonant#English

(phonetics) A sound that is articulated with the pharynx; ellipsis of pharyngeal consonant..


concomitant

First attested 1607; from Middle French concomitant, from Latin concomitāns, the present participle of concomitor (“I accompany”), from con- (“together”) + comitor (“I accompany”), from comes (“companion”).

(grammar) Of or relating to the grammatical aspect which expresses that a secondary action is occurring simultaneously to the primary action of the statement.


labiodental

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

/f/ and /v/ are labiodental consonants.

(phonetics) articulated with the lower lip and upper teeth.

شَفَوِيّ أَسْنَانِيّ (šafawiyy ʔasnāniyy, literally “labial dental”)


labiodental

(phonetics) A speech sound articulated with the lower lip and upper teeth.

շրթնատամնային

a speech sound articulated with the lower lip and upper teeth


dot

From Middle English *dot, dotte, from Old English dott (“a dot, point”), from Proto-West Germanic *dott, from Proto-Germanic *duttaz (“wisp”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Dot, Dotte (“a clump”), Dutch dot (“lump, knot, clod”), Low German Dutte (“a plug”), dialectal Swedish dott (“a little heap, bunch, clump”).

cog

(grammar) A punctuation mark used to indicate the end of a sentence or an abbreviated part of a word; a full stop; a period.

full stop

at the end of a sentence or abbreviation


hiatus

en-noun

hiatus (countable and uncountable, plural hiatus or hiatuses)

Learned borrowing from Latin hiātus (“opening”) (mid-16th century), from hiō (“stand open, yawn”).

lbor

Words like reality and naïve contain vowels in hiatus.

(linguistics, uncountable) A syllable break between two vowels, without an intervening consonant. (Compare diphthong.)


sickness

en-noun

sickness (usually uncountable, plural sicknesses)

From Middle English sikness, from Old English sēocnes. By surface analysis, sick + -ness.

We can now return to the question of how we treat the phenomenon of dative sickness (the possibility of substituting dative in place of accusative on the experiencer nominal) in Icelandic.

1997, Michael B. Smith, “§ 4.7”, in Quirky Case in Icelandic:

(linguistics) The analogical misuse of a rarer or marked grammatical case in the place of a more common or unmarked case.


palatal

en-adj

palatal (comparative more palatal, superlative most palatal)

more palatal (comparative)
most palatal (superlative)

(phonetics) Articulated at the hard palate.

غَارِيّ

(phonetics) articulated at the hard palate

(phonetics, uncommon) Articulated at the palate: dorsal.


aphesis

en-noun

aphesis (countable and uncountable, plural apheses)

Attested since 1880. Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek ἄφεσις (áphesis, “letting go”), from ἀφίημι (aphíēmi), from ἀπό (apó, “off”) + ἵημι (híēmi, “send forth”).

lbor

The word "scarp" is derived from "escarp" by aphesis.

(phonetics, linguistics, prosody) The loss of the initial unstressed vowel of a word.


aphetic

Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek ἄφετος (áphetos), equivalent to aphesis + -tic.

“’Pon” is an aphetic form of “upon”.

(phonetics, linguistics, prosody) Of, relating to, or formed by aphesis.


prepend

en-verb

prepend (third-person singular simple present prepends, present participle prepending, simple past and past participle prepended)

prepends (present singular third-person)
prepending (participle present)
prepended (participle past)
prepended (past)

From pre- + (ap)pend, by analogy with append.

The final cleaned assemblies in GenBank were downloaded, and the contig identifiers were pre-pended with the sample name and haplotype integer (where 1 = paternal and 2 = maternal).

2023 May 11, Wen-Wei LiaoMobin AsriJana Ebleret al., “A draft human pangenome reference”, in Nature, volume 617, →DOI:

(computing, linguistics, transitive) To attach (an expression, phrase, etc.) to another, as a prefix.

antaŭglui

to attach (an expression, phrase, etc.) to another, as a prefix


synonymy

en-noun

synonymy (countable and uncountable, plural synonymies)

From Latin synonymia, from Ancient Greek συνωνυμία (sunōnumía), from σύν (sún, “with”) + ὄνομα (ónoma, “name”).

synonymity (10× less common than synonymy)

synonymousness (600× less common than synonymy)

(semantics) The quality of being synonymous; sameness of meaning.

homosemy (2000× less common than synonymy)


nickname

→ German: Nickname

→ Japanese: ニックネーム (nikkunēmu)

From Middle English nekename, alteration (due to a rebracketing of an ekename as a nekename) of earlier ekename (“nickname”), from eke (“additional”) + name. Compare Old Norse aukanafn, auknafn, auknefni, Faroese eyknevni, Danish øgenavn, Norwegian Nynorsk aukenamn, Swedish öknamn, and German Low German Ökelname.
For other similar cases of incorrect division, see also apron, daffodil, newt, orange, umpire.

epithet

invented names used alongside the actual name

"The Big Apple" is a common nickname for New York City.

He excelled with the arbalest steel crossbow, winning the nickname the Arbalestier and joined Bahriyya regiment, the crack soldiers who defeated the Crusaders and became known as the Turkish Lions and the Islamic Templars.

2011, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography – A History of the Middle East, page 329:

A familiar, invented name for a person or thing used instead of the actual name of the person or thing, often based on some noteworthy characteristic.

My name is Jonathan, but I go by my nickname, Johnny.

A familiar, shortened or diminutive name for a person or thing.


cleft

en-verb

cleft (third-person singular simple present clefts, present participle clefting, simple past and past participle clefted)

clefts (present singular third-person)
clefting (participle present)
clefted (participle past)
clefted (past)

From Middle English clift, from Old English ġeclyft, from Proto-West Germanic *klufti, from Proto-Germanic *kluftiz, equivalent to cleave + -t (“-th”). Compare Dutch klucht (“coarse comedy”), Swedish klyft (“cave, den”), German Kluft. See cleave.

This may be so because in most languages the most natural clefting involves NP's, and it is in fact hard in most languages to cleft the verb, although some — notably Kwa languages in West-Africa — allow such clefting.

1983, John Haiman, Pamela Munro, editors, Switch-reference and Universal Grammar: Proceedings of a Symposium on Switch Reference and Universal Grammar, Winnipeg, May 1981:

When the affected object is clefted, the clefted constituent may be assigned a contrastive reading on the event denoted by the clause, as is shown in (62).

2002, Claire Lefebvre, A Grammar of Fongbe, page 521:

The strategy the language employs is to cleft the clause containing the wh-phrase, as exemplified in (3) […]

2013, Katharina Hartmann, Cleft Structures, page 270:

(linguistics) To syntactically separate a prominent constituent from the rest of the clause that concerns it, such as threat in "The threat which I saw but which he didn't see, was his downfall."


brivla

Brivla are "content words", i.e., categorematic. When acting as selbri they are roughly comparable to verbs (or adjectives (or even nouns), if the selbri's arity is one), and when acting as sumti (e.g., due to being prefixed with "le") they are comparable to nouns. If a brivla modifies another one (thereby forming a "tanru"), the modifying brivla would be comparable to an adverb or adjective (*), depending on whether the modified brivla is acting as selbri or sumti, respectively. // Footnote: (*) - the modifying brivla could instead be comparable, in some cases, to the modified brivla's predicate.

They often have no semantic meaning in themselves, though they may affect the semantics of brivla to which they are attached.

1997, John W. Cowan, The Complete Lojban Language →ISBN http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-download_wiki_attachment.php?attId=194

a. 2001, Richard Curnow http://www.rpcurnow.force9.co.uk/jbofihe/
Fix major bugs in the lexical analysis for cmafi'e (brivla mis-scanned as sequences of cmavo joined together.)

a. 2003, Pierre Abbat https://web.archive.org/web/20050926021613/http://phma.hn.org/Language/valfendi.html http://web.archive.org/web/#*/http://phma.hn.org/Language/valfendi.html
Currently, it lexes cmene, cmavo, and brivla, and checkes [sic] cmene and cmavo for validity, but does not do full validity checking of brivla.

(Lojban grammar) A Lojban predicate word. Specifically, a word which may be used to express a selbri relation (a statement of truth of one kind or another) between a number of arguments. Gismu, lujvo and fu'ivla are all brivla.


velar

Borrowed from Latin vēlāris, from vēlum (“sail; veil, awning”).

(phonetics) Articulated at the velum or soft palate.


velar

(phonetics) A sound articulated at the soft palate.


grave

en-adj

grave (comparative graver, superlative gravest)

graver (comparative)
gravest (superlative)

From Middle French grave, a learned borrowing from Latin gravis (“heavy, important”). Compare Old French greve (“terrible, dreadful”). Doublet of grief.

(phonology, dated, of a sound) Dull, produced in the middle or back of the mouth. (See Grave and acute on Wikipedia.Wikipedia)


visarga

Borrowed from Sanskrit विसर्ग (visarga).

XXV of Centamil published by the Tamil Sangam at Madura that in ancient times āytam was represented by visarga.

1934, P. S. Subrahmanya Sastri, History of Grammatical Theories in Tamil and Their Relation to the Grammatical Literature in Sanskrit:

(phonology, Sanskrit grammar) the voiceless terminal h in Sanskrit


affirmative sentence

en-noun

affirmative sentence (plural affirmative sentences)

(grammar) A sentence that affirms (rather than negates) a proposition.


descendant

From Middle English dessendaunte, borrowed from Middle French, from Latin dēscendēns, present participle of descendere, from dē + scandere (“to climb, ascend”).

English and Scots are the descendants of Old English.

(linguistics) A language that is descended from another.

Coordinate term: cognate

The direct descendant of this form is the Slavic aorist: Sb.-Cr. nȍsī, dȍnosī.

1993, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen, “The Slavic i-verbs with an excursus on the Indo-European ē-verbs”, in Bela Brogyanyi, Reiner Lipp, editors, Comparative-Historical Linguistics, John Benjamins Publishing, →ISBN, page 479:

(linguistics) A word or form in one language that is descended from a counterpart in an ancestor language.


adverbial clause

adverbial clause (plural adverbial clauses)

(grammar) A subordinate clause that functions as an adverb within a main clause.

bijwoordelijke bepaling

a subordinate clause that functions as an adverb within a main clause


lingual

Learned borrowing from Medieval Latin linguālis, from lingua (“the tongue; a language, speech”) + -ālis (“-al”, adjectival suffix); equivalent to lingua + -al. Doublet of lingualis.

af

(anatomy, dentistry, relational) Related to, near, or on the side toward the tongue.

(phonetics) Articulated with the tongue.

(linguistics, relational) Related to language or linguistics.


lingual

(phonetics) A sound articulated with the tongue.


conditional mood

en-noun

conditional mood (plural conditional moods)

(grammar) A form of the verb used to signify that something is contingent upon the outcome of something else.


attributive adjective

attributive adjective (plural attributive adjectives)

The word “red” in “the red balloon” is an attributive adjective.

In the phrase “attributive adjective”, “attributive” is the attributive adjective.

(grammar) An adjective that modifies the head of the noun phrase in which it occurs; an adjective that precedes the word or phrase it modifies.


listeme

Idioms such as "red herring" are listemes, as are irregular forms such as "geese".

A memorized chunk is sometimes called a listeme, that is, an item that has to be memorized as part of a list; one can argue that this book ought to have been called Listemes and Rules.

2000, Steven Pinker, Words and Rules, →ISBN, page 24:

(linguistics) An item that is memorized as part of a list, as opposed to being generated by a rule.


hapax legomenon

From Ancient Greek ἅπαξ λεγόμενον (hápax legómenon, “(something) said only once”), from ἅπαξ (hápax, “once”) and λεγόμενον (legómenon), passive participle of λέγω (légō, “say”).

der

ἅπαξ λεγόμενον

άγνως is a New Testament hapax legomenon. άγνός occurs two other times in Paul, both occurrences are in 2 Cor.

1999, Casey Wayne Davis, Oral Biblical Criticism: The Influence of the Principles of Orality on the Literary Structure of Paul's Epistle to the Philippians, page 89, footnote:

There is a lovely technical term for a word that appears once in a body of text: a hapax legomenon (plural: hapax legomena), Greek for “once said.” The term comes from philology, the study of old texts.

[2000, Steven Pinker, Words and Rules, →ISBN, page 172:

In our case this means that πρωτοβαθρέω is an absolute hapax legomenon, if one assumes that the occurrences of βάθρον in Isa and διαβάθρη in Sam II are the result of corruptions.

2005, Hanna Kahana, Esther: Juxtaposition of the Septuagint Translation with the Hebrew Text, page 129, footnote:

The research discovered 510 different terms. Of these 164 (approximately 32%) were hapax legomena (i.e., there was only once instance in the data), while 107 (approximately 21%) were attested by 10 or more citations.

2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 5:

(linguistics) A word occurring only once in a given corpus.


temporal

en-adj

temporal (not generally comparable, comparative more temporal, superlative most temporal)

more temporal (comparative)
most temporal (superlative)

From Middle English temporal, temporel (“transitory, worldly, material, of secular society”), from Old French temporel or Latin temporālis (“of time (in grammar), temporary, relating to time as opposed to eternity”), from tempus (“time, period, opportunity”) + -ālis.

af

(grammar) Relating to or denoting time or tense.

Relating to time:
Relating to or denoting time or tense.


metonymy

en-noun

metonymy (countable and uncountable, plural metonymies)

From Late Latin metonymia, from Ancient Greek μετωνυμίᾱ (metōnumíā, “change of name”), from μετά (metá, “other”) + ὄνομα (ónoma, “name”).

der

Coordinate term: metaphor

Metonymy does new names impose,
And things for things by near relation shews.

1835, L[arret] Langley, A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster: Printed by C. White, Baxter-Gate, →OCLC, page 7:

...the principle of metonymy is simply to substitute for the plain name of a thing a name or phrase based on something connected with it.

1891 September 20, William Minto, “Practical talks on writing English”, in Theodor Flood, editor, The Chautauquan, volume 13, →OCLC, page 279:

(rhetoric) The use of a single characteristic or part of an object, concept or phenomenon to identify the entire object, concept, phenomenon or a related object.


relative adjective

en-noun

relative adjective (plural relative adjectives)

(grammar) A relative pronoun used in an adjectival clause.

關係形容詞

a relative pronoun used in an adjectival clause


active voice

active voice (usually uncountable, plural active voices)

"The ball was kicked by Fred." would, in active voice, be "Fred kicked the ball."

(grammar, uncountable) The form in which the subject of a verb carries out some action.

bedrywende vorm

the form in which the subject of a verb carries out some action

(grammar, countable) A form in a particular language used to express the active voice.


predicative adjective

predicative adjective (plural predicative adjectives)

‘Complicated’ is a predicative adjective in the sentence ‘Grammar is complicated.’

In ‘This looks bad,’ the word ‘bad’ is the predicative adjective.

(grammar) An adjective that is not part of the noun clause it modifies, but is linked to it with a copula.


omission

omission (countable and uncountable, plural omissions)

From Middle English omissioun, from Old French omission, from Late Latin omissio, omissionem, from Latin omitto.

(grammar) The shortening of a word or phrase, using an apostrophe ( ' ) to replace the missing letters, often used to approximate the sound of speech or a specific dialect.

изпускане

grammar: the shortening of a word or phrase


tmesis

tmesis (countable and uncountable, plural tmeses)

From Late Latin tmēsis, from Ancient Greek τμῆσις (tmêsis, “a cutting”), from τέμνω (témnō, “I cut”). First attested in 1586.

der

(prosody) The insertion of one or more words between the components of a compound word.

тмезис

insertion of one or more words between the components of a word


soft

en-adj

soft (comparative softer, superlative softest)

softer (comparative)
softest (superlative)

hard

antonym(s) of “giving way under pressure”

firm

antonym(s) of “lacking strength or resolve”

From Middle English softe, from Old English sōfte, alteration of earlier sēfte (“soft”), from Proto-West Germanic *samft(ī) (“level, even, smooth, soft, gentle”) (compare *sōmiz (“agreeable, fitting”)), from Proto-Indo-European *semptio-, *semtio-, from *sem- (“one, whole”). Cognate with West Frisian sêft (“gentle; soft”), Dutch zacht (“soft”), German Low German sacht (“soft”), German sanft (“soft, yielding”), Old Norse sœmr (“agreeable, fitting”), samr (“same”). More at seem, same.

inh

DH represents the voiced (soft) th of English these clothes.

1954, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings:


Pama-Nyungan

/ˌpʌməˈnjʊŋən/

From pama (“man, person”) (in several northeast Australian Aboriginal languages) + nyungaa (“man, person”) (in several southwestern Australian Aboriginal languages) + -an. Apparently coined by American linguist Kenneth L. Hale (1934-2001), to show the vast geographical extent of the family.

(linguistics) A proposed language family encompassing most Australian Aboriginal languages, including Pitjantjatjara and Warlpiri, but excluding those spoken in the northwest.


sign

en-noun

sign (countable and uncountable, plural signs)

From Middle English signe, sygne, syng, seine, sine, syne, from Old English seġn (“sign; mark; token”) and Old French signe, seing (“sign; mark; signature”); both from Latin signum (“a mark; sign; token”); root uncertain. Doublet of signum. Partially displaced native token.

teken

a fact that shows that something exists or may happen

նշան

any of several specialized non-alphabetic symbols

A Noun substantive and a Noun adjective may be thus distinguished, that a substantive may have the sign a or the before it; as, puer, a boy, the boy; but an adjective cannot, as, bonus, good.

1692, Thomas Bennet, Short Introduction of Grammar ... of the Latine Tongue:

A Pronoun is a Noun implying a Person, but not admitting the Sign a or the before it.

1753, Charles Davies, Busby's English Introduction to the Latin Tongue Examined, page 11:

And some linguistic signs, like “the”, “and” or “with”, may lack apparent objects, though they are clearly meaningful and interpretable.

2008, Eero Tarasti, Robert S. Hatten, A Sounding of Signs: Modalities and Moments in Music, Culture, and Philosophy : Essays in Honor of Eero Tarasti on His 60th Anniversary:

A semantic unit, something that conveys meaning or information (e.g. a word of written language); (linguistics, semiotics) a unit consisting of a signifier and a signified concept. (See sign (semiotics).)


sign

en-verb

sign (third-person singular simple present signs, present participle signing, simple past and past participle signed)

signs (present singular third-person)
signing (participle present)
signed (participle past)
signed (past)
sign (infinitive)

Scottish Gaelic: soidhn

From Middle English signen, seinen, seinien, partly from Old English seġnian (“to mark; sign”) and partly from Anglo-Norman seigner, seiner et al., Old French signer et al., and their source Latin signāre (“to mark, seal, indicate, signify”); all from Latin signum (“a mark, sign”); see Etymology 1, above. Compare sain.

nënshkruaj

to make (a document) official by writing one's signature

The Queen signed her letter with the regal signet.

(transitive, now rare) To seal (a document etc.) with an identifying seal or symbol.

Meantime revolving in his thoughtful mind / The scar, with which his manly knee was sign'd […].

1726, Elijah Fenton, The Odyssey of Homer:

(transitive) To mark, to put or leave a mark on.

To make a mark
To mark, to put or leave a mark on.

Enquire the Iewes house out, giue him this deed, / And let him signe it […].

c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):

(transitive) To validate or ratify (a document) by writing one's signature on it.

I forgot to sign that letter to my aunt.

(transitive) More generally, to write one's signature on (something) as a means of identification etc.

Just sign your name at the bottom there.

I received a letter from some woman who signs herself ‘Mrs Trellis’.

(transitive or reflexive) To write (one's name) as a signature.

To make a mark
To write (one's name) as a signature.

Please sign on the dotted line.

(intransitive) To write one's signature.

To make a mark
To write one's signature.

Agents say Wales back Gavin Henson has signed for Cardiff Blues.

2011, The Guardian, (headline), 18 Oct 2011

(intransitive) To finalise a contractual agreement to work for a given sports team, record label etc.

It was a great month. I managed to sign three major players.

(transitive) To engage (a sports player, musician etc.) in a contract.

rekrytoida

to persuade a sports player etc. to sign a contract


strand

en-verb

strand (third-person singular simple present strands, present participle stranding, simple past and past participle stranded)

strands (present singular third-person)
stranding (participle present)
stranded (participle past)
stranded (past)

* From Middle English strand, strond, from Old English strand (“strand, sea-shore, shore”), from Proto-West Germanic *strand, from Proto-Germanic *strandō (“edge, rim, shore”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)trAnt- (“strand, border, field”), from Proto-Indo-European *ster- (“to broaden, spread out”). Cognate with West Frisian strân, Dutch strand, German Strand, Danish strand, Swedish strand, Norwegian Bokmål strand, Icelandic strönd.
* (street): Perhaps from the similarity of shape.

der

We first note that wh-movement can freely strand prepositions in Icelandic, as in the other Scandinavian languages.

1985, Joan Maling, Annie Zaenen, “Preposition-Stranding and Passive”, in Nordic Journal of Linguistics, volume 8, number 2, →DOI, page 199:

In her dissertation, Goldberg (2005) offers a review of diagnostics used to identify verb-stranding VPE to that point, including tests which link the characteristics of English-style VPE (which strands an auxiliary verb) to verb-stranding VPE in languages like Hebrew and Irish.

2021, Emily Manetta, “Verb-second and the verb-stranding verb phrase ellipsis debate”, in Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, volume 6, number 1, →DOI, page 6:

(transitive, grammar) To leave an element (e.g., an adposition) without its complement adjacent to it.

懸空

(grammar) to leave an element without its object


RP

en-noun

RP (countable and uncountable, plural RPs)

Goodbye RP / Let our words go free / Coo and howl / Lay flat your vowels

2008, “RIP RP”, in The Boy Bands Have Won, performed by Chumbawamba:

Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation#English

(linguistics) Initialism of Received Pronunciation.


target

→ Japanese: ターゲット (tāgetto)

From Middle French targette, targuete, diminutive of targe (“light shield”), from Old French, from Frankish *targa (“buckler”), akin to Old Norse targa (“small round shield”) (whence also Old English targe, targa (“shield”)) from Proto-Germanic *targǭ (“edge”), from Proto-Indo-European *derǵʰ- (“fenced lot”). Akin to Old High German zarga (“side wall, rim”) (German Zarge (“frame”)), Spanish tarjeta (“card”).

cog

Do you charge by source or target?

(translation studies) The translated version of a document, or the language into which translation occurs.


velopharyngeal

en-adj

velopharyngeal (comparative more velopharyngeal, superlative most velopharyngeal)

more velopharyngeal (comparative)
most velopharyngeal (superlative)

(phonetics) Articulated at the velopharynx. (Those with cleft palate produce such sounds instead of standard sibilants.)


velopharyngeal

(phonetics) A sound articulated at the velopharynx.


phonetic

Borrowed from Latin phōnēticus, from Ancient Greek φωνητῐκός (phōnētikós). By surface analysis, phone + -etic.

(linguistics) Relating to phones (as opposed to phonemes).


phonetic

I suspect that 田 dien is the original character and true phonetic of the whole group.

1887–88, J. Edkins, “The character 眞 true”, in The China Review, volume 16, page 306:

In the first case the character is pronounced identically, even as to tone, as the phonetic.

1984, John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy:

Or, the semantic may wrap around the phonetic, or position within the phonetic.

2013, William S-Y. Wang, Love and War in Ancient China: Voices from the Shijing, page 25:

(linguistics) In such writing systems as the Chinese writing system, the portion of a phono-semantic character that provides an indication of its pronunciation; contrasted with semantic (which is usually the radical).

聲旁

component of a phono-semantic compound that indicates pronunciation


abugida

/ɑːbuˈɡiːdə/

First use appears c. 1961. See cite below.

азбугида

writing system — see also alphasyllabary

Words are entered under the Abugida system.

1961, Haile Sellassie I University (contributor), University College Review - Volume 1, Issue 1, page 137:

1997 [Routledge], Peter T. Daniels, 2: Scripts of Semitic Languages, Robert Hetzron (editor), The Semitic Languages, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2005, Transferred to Digital Printing, unnumbered page,
An abugida is a script that uses characters for CV syllables wherein the several characters for some consonant plus the language's array of vowels are modifications of the character for that consonant followed by the unmarked vowel (phonemically /a/).

In an abugida, each consonant carries an inherent vowel, usually /a/.

2007, Unicode Consortium, The Unicode Standard 5.0, Addison-Wesley, page 200:

(linguistics) A kind of syllabary (syllabic alphabet) in which a symbol or glyph representing a syllable contains parts representing a vowel and a consonant, such that symbols for syllables not including the default vowel are generated by adding a common notation to indicate the vowel that it does include.

1997 [Routledge], Peter T. Daniels, 2: Scripts of Semitic Languages, Robert Hetzron (editor), The Semitic Languages, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2005, Transferred to Digital Printing, unnumbered page,
For the scripts of the Semitic languages, five categories are needed: logography, syllabary, abjad, alphabet, and abugida. A sixth, featural script, appears when Arabic script is adapted to non-Semitic languages. […] (The English word "abugida" is borrowed from the Amharic term for the letters of the script when taken in the order known from the Ge'ez transliterations of the Hebrew letter names found in the superscriptions of the sections of Psalm 119, as used in the liturgy; it takes the first four consonants and the first four vowels in their traditional order of presentation.)

2015, Patricia Donegan, 1: The Emergence of Phonological Representation, Brian MacWhinney, William O'Grady (editors, The Handbook of Language Emergence, John Wiley & Sons (Wiley Blackwell), page 39,
The widespread use and easy learnability of alphabetic writing systems, the typical arrangement of syllabic or abugida phoneme classes (as with Japanese kana, or devanagari), rhyme and alliteration, folk naming of correlative phoneme sets (like the “hard” and “soft” consonant groups of Slavic languages), differential learning of L2 sounds that can and cannot be readily identified with an L1 phoneme (Best, McRoberts, and Sithole, Werker and Tees, 1984b; Best and Tyler, 2007) - all assure us that phonemic perception and representation are not merely a result of alphabetic writing.

(linguistics) A kind of syllabary (syllabic alphabet) in which a symbol or glyph representing a syllable contains parts representing a vowel and a consonant, typically such that symbols for different syllables are generated by adding, altering or removing the vowel portion, often by applying a diacritic to a stable consonant symbol.


ä

(lexicography) A dictionary transcription for the PALM vowel


Ngan'gityemerri

(linguistics) An Aboriginal language spoken in the Daly River region of the Northern Territory of Australia of the Southern Daly language family.


digraph

From Ancient Greek δίς (dís, “double”) + γράφω (gráphō, “write”), equivalent to di- + -graph.

As a special education teacher, I find that introducing one or two digraphs a week works well.

2022 July 11, Sarah Forst, “How to Teach Consonant Digraphs”, in The Designer Teacher:

A consonant digraph is a combination of two consonants that represent one sound.

2023 November 14, Bronwyn, “What Is a Digraph? Understanding This Phonics Building Block”, in TeachStarter:

(linguistics) A pair of letters, especially a pair representing a single phoneme.


slender

slender (comparative slenderer or more slender, superlative slenderest or most slender)

slenderer (comparative)
more slender (comparative)
slenderest (superlative)
most slender (superlative)

From Middle English slendre, sclendre, from Old French esclendre (“thin, slender”), from Old Dutch slinder (“thin, lank”), from Proto-Germanic *slindraz (“sliding, slippery”), from Proto-Indo-European *sleydʰ- (“to slip”). Cognate with Bavarian Schlenderling (“that which dangles”), German schlendern (“to saunter, stroll”), Dutch slidderen, slinderen (“to wriggle, creep like a serpent”), Low German slindern (“to slide on ice”). More at slide, slither.

cog

Being a person of slender means, he was unable to afford any luxuries.

The grounds for the conjecture are somewhat slender.

1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 9, page 413:

The slender service between Ellesmere Port and Helsby has been added, too.

2022 January 26, Barry Doe, “Fabrik offers an end to hard times”, in RAIL, number 949, page 42:


stress

en-noun

stress (countable and uncountable, plural stresses)

Hans Selye
Walter Cannon
stress
stress (mechanics)

From a shortening of Middle English destresse, borrowed from Old French destrecier, from Latin distringō (“to stretch out”). This form probably coalesced with Middle English stresse, from Old French estrece (“narrowness”), from Vulgar Latin *strictia, from Latin strictus (“narrow”).
In the sense of "mental strain" or “disruption”, used occasionally in the 1920s and 1930s by psychologists, including Walter Cannon (1934); in “biological threat”, used by endocrinologist Hans Selye, by metaphor with stress in physics (force on an object) in the 1930s, and popularized by same in the 1950s.

Some people put the stress on the first syllable of “controversy”; others put it on the second.

(countable, phonetics, loosely) A suprasegmental feature of a language having additional attention raised to a sound, word or word group by means of of loudness, duration or pitch; phonological prominence.

The shift from pitch to stress appears to happen before the other obliques begin merging in the Proto-Italic, Proto-Germanic, Primitive Irish, and Middle Indo-Aryan. But further investigation into the timeline of sound changes […] shows that, at least in Germanic, the oblique and core noun stems sound quite unpredictably different in all these families by the time of the crucial accent shift from pitch to stress. […] once a language becomes stress-sensitive, there seems to be a strong tendency in early Indo-European languages to shift the stress to the first syllable. This change happens shortly after the change to stress accent in Proto-Germanic, Proto-Italic, and Proto-Celtic, and even Thessalian, with evidence from Dybo's Law and Verner's Law left behind to show that sound changes happened after the changes to stress accent.

2020 September 7, Steve Rapaport, “Parallel syncretism in early Indo-European”, in Bridget Drinka, editor, Historical Linguistics 2017: Selected Papers from the 23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, San Antonio, Texas, 31 July – 4 August 2017, →DOI, page 59:

(countable, phonetics, strictly) The suprasegmental feature of a language having additional attention raised to a sound by means of of loudness and/or duration; phonological prominence phonetically achieved by means of dynamics as distinct from pitch.


infix

en-verb

infix (third-person singular simple present infixes, present participle infixing, simple past and past participle infixed)

infixes (present singular third-person)
infixing (participle present)
infixed (participle past)
infixed (past)

Back-formation from Middle English infixed (“stuck in”), from Latin infixus, past participle of infigō (“to fasten in”).

(transitive, linguistics) To insert a morpheme inside an existing word.


infix

(linguistics) An affix inserted inside a root, such as -ma- in English edumacation.

The infix position contains (pronominal) object markers, showing agreement with the object(s), which might be one or more noun phrases following the verb, or a foregoing or previously mentioned object marking.

2008, Derek Nurse, Tense and Aspect in Bantu, →ISBN:

[…] but the second example contravenes all the rules, as the negative infix should NEVER precede any Set 2 affix present in the complex.

2008, George Hewitt, Are Verbs Always What They Seem to Be?:

[…] at least in languages, like Swahili, which exhibit morphologically different tense/aspect infixes in affirmative and negative clauses[…]

2018, Gloria Cocchi, chapter 5, in Structuring Variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond, →DOI:

The morpheme in question is the reflexive prefix ('infix' in the traditional Bantu terminology).

2023, Bostoen, de Schryver, Guérois & Pacchiarotti, editor, On reconstructing Proto-Bantu grammar, page 709:

(some authors when describing agglutinative languages, otherwise dated) A prefix that is not at the beginning of a word, such as the con- of reconcile, or a suffix that is not at the end of a word, such as the -al of nationality.

some authors when describing agglutinative languages; otherwise dated; some authors when describing agglutinative languages; otherwise dated

(linguistics, proscribed) A morpheme that always appears between other morphemes in a word, such as -i- and -o- in English (i.e. an interfix).


paucal

From Latin paucālis (“few, little”), from paucus, plural paucī (“few, little, a few, the select few, the oligarchs”), from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂w- (“few, little”), + Latin adjective suffix -ālis.

der

first-person paucal

paucal number

paucal and plural pronouns

(grammar) Pertaining to a language form referring to a few of something (three to around ten), as a small group of people; contrast singular, dual, trial, and plural.

But too much can occur in the negative with a paucal meaning when there is no explicit or implicit infinitival complement: I didn't enjoy it too much is simply an informal alterant of I didn't enjoy it very much.

2002, Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language:

(linguistics) Expressing a relatively small quantity or degree.


paucal

(grammar) A language form referring to a few of something (three to around ten), as a small group of people; contrast singular, dual, trial, and plural.


virile

en-adj

virile (comparative more virile, superlative most virile)

more virile (comparative)
most virile (superlative)

From Middle French viril, from Latin virīlis, from vir (“man”, “male human”) + -īlis (suffix forming adjectives from nouns).

suffix

(grammar) Pertaining to a grammatical gender used in plurals of some Slavic languages, corresponding to the personal masculine animate nouns.


click

Imitative of the "click" sound; first recorded in the 1500s. Compare Saterland Frisian klikke (“to click”), Middle Dutch clicken (Modern Dutch: klikken (“to click”)), Old High German klecchen (Modern German: klecken, klicken (“to click”)), Danish klikke (“to click”), Swedish klicka (“to click”), Norwegian klikke (“to click”), Norwegian klekke (“to hatch”).

onomatopoeic

Imitative

tsk is a click in English.

(phonetics) An ingressive sound made by coarticulating a velar or uvular closure with another closure.


nasal

en-adj

nasal (comparative more nasal, superlative most nasal)

more nasal (comparative)
most nasal (superlative)

From Middle English, from Medieval Latin nāsālis, from nāsus (“the nose”) + -ālis (“-al”, adjectival suffix). Doublet of nasalis.

af

nasal vowel

(phonetics) Having a sound imparted by means of the nose; and specifically, made by lowering the soft palate, in some cases with closure of the oral passage, the voice thus issuing (wholly or partially) through the nose, as in the consonants m, n, ng.

أَنْفِي

having a quality imparted by means of the nose

nasal utterance

"Are you sure you're OK?" she said with a nasal Australian accent.

2016, A.K. Brown, Jumpstart (Champagne Universe Series: Book 1), page 2:

(phonetics) Characterized by resonance in the nasal passage.


nasal

(phonetics) Ellipsis of nasal consonant.


artificial language

en-noun

artificial language (plural artificial languages)


existential

From Late Latin existentialis, from existentia.

(linguistics) Relating to part of a clause that indicates existence, e.g. "there is".

existencial

linguistics: that part of a sentence indicating existence e.g. "there is"


existential

We argue that existentials form a radial category, with a prototype and less canonical instances, where the prototype is clearly definable but the actual borderline between existentials and other clause types is fuzzy.

2014, Silvia Luraghi, Tuomas Huumo, Partitive Cases and Related Categories, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, →ISBN, page 153:

existential clause
existential clause#English

(linguistics) Ellipsis of existential clause.


possession

possession (countable and uncountable, plural possessions)

absence

antonym(s) of “taking, holding, keeping something as one's own”

مَسّ

the state of being possessed by a spirit or demon

Some languages distinguish between a construction like 'my car', which shows alienable possession — the car could become someone else's — and one like 'my foot', which has inalienable possession — my foot will always be mine.

(linguistics) A syntactic relationship between two nouns or nominals that may be used to indicate ownership.


SVO

English is an SVO language.

(linguistics) of a language, employing a system of syntax where the subject of a sentence precedes the verb, which is followed by the object.


cacuminal

en-adj

cacuminal (comparative more cacuminal, superlative most cacuminal)

more cacuminal (comparative)
most cacuminal (superlative)

From cacūmin- (the stem of the Latin cacūmen (“extremity, point, peak”) + -al.

uder

1942, George Leonard Trager, Studies in Linguistics, Volumes 1-7, page 52,
/L/ and /n/, slightly more cacuminal than the alveolar series, are very rare, and occur only in word-final position.

The cacuminal s is produced by raising the tongue-tip to a point behind the alveoli, with a concavity in its upper surface;

1951, William James Entwistle, The Spanish Language: Together with Portuguese, Catalan and Basque, page 218:

1992, Anatoly Liberman, Vowel lengthening before resonant + another consonant and svarabhakti in Germanic, Irmengard Rauch, Gerald F. Carr, Robert L. Kyes (editors), On Germanic Linguistics: Issues and Methods, Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 68, page 190,
It is a trill, because the choice can be only between a cacuminal trill or a cacuminal lateral, but cacuminal l already exists in the system […] .

(phonology, dated) Pronounced using a concave or retroflexed tongue.


cacuminal

(phonology, dated) A sound pronounced using a retroflexed tongue.


constructed language

en-noun

constructed language (plural constructed languages)

The first practical constructed language was the south-west German Pastor Schleyer's Volapük from 1879; its complicated grammar and irregular vocabulary made learning difficult, however. The most successful has been Esperanto, devised by the Warsaw ophthalmologist Ludwig Zamenhof in 1887, that today can count some one million speakers.

2004, Steven Roger Fischer, A History of Language:

[...] Unas Language from the science fiction television series Stargate SG-1 is a simplistic constructed language that lends itself to quick, sharp sentences.

2008, Inc Icon Group International, Repeat: Webster's Quotations, Facts and Phrases, ICON Group International, →ISBN, page 587:

(linguistics) A human language that has been consciously devised by an individual or a group, as opposed to having naturally evolved as part of a culture like a natural language.

It has been said that— when I made the observation, that if they were not married they ought to be—I endeavoured to stab their reputation. Now, I'll prove that I endeavoured to do nothing of the sort. [...] I'll prove it by logic, and I defy all the mathematicians in the habitable globe to known it down. I'll prove it by the regular mathematical construction of the English language, and will any man tell me there's any constructed language in the universe more mathematically regular than that?

1844, Henry Cockton, Sylvester Sound, the somnambulist, pages 203–204:

Who does not understand, as single parts of speech, all the common combinations which serve to connect and carry on construction, such as in-consequence-of, on-this-account, [...], and the like? Indeed, we are entitled to say of ordinary common-place speakers, that as they scarcely use constructed language except in forms already existing, so, with them, each thought finds an immediate sign in some familiar sentence; but then, be it observed, the parts which compose the sign have ceased to be separately significant: the sentences so used have been brought back to the condition of original or natural language, that of exclamations, — they have ceased to be logical, by having become purely rhetorical.

1855, Benjamin Humphrey Smart, Thought and Language..., Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, page 165:

What we ordinarily term language is made up of vocal signs of an arbitrary character, with corresponding written signs. As general principles are recognized in the construction and arrangement of these signs, we see at once the reason that brutes have no artificial language — that is, no sign that are agreed upon as expressive of ideas. They do indeed have a natural language, made up of natural signs, cries, and motions, which vary in different tribes of animals; but artificial, that is, constructed language, is a wholly different thing, although it may incorporate into itself features from natural language. The parrot is indeed said to talk, but it is sheer imitation; and he never originates any language.

1867, David King, The British Harbinger, David King, page 384:

(linguistics, archaic) Any language used by people, as opposed to less civilized means of communication, such as the socialization between animals.


anagram

/ˈæ.nə.ɡɹæm/

Late 16th century, either from Middle French anagramme or Latin anagramma, formed on Ancient Greek ἀνά (aná, “up, back”) + γράμμα (grámma, “letter”). Analyzable as ana- (“up, back”) + -gram (“letter”).

As Mr. Sloan always says, there is no "I" in "team", but there is an "I" in "pie". And there's an "I" in "meat pie". Anagram of "meat" is "team"… I don't know what he's talking about.

2004, Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright, Shaun of the Dead, spoken by Shaun (Simon Pegg):

(of words) A word or phrase that is created by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase.

anagram

word or phrase created by rearranging letters from another word or phrase


level

en-adj

level (comparative leveler or leveller, superlative levelest or levellest)

leveler (comparative)
leveller (comparative)
levelest (superlative)
levellest (superlative)

From Middle English level, from Old French livel, liveau m, later nivel, niveau, from Latin libella f (“a balance, a level”), diminutive of libra f (“a balance, a level”); see libra, librate. Doublet of libella and niveau.
The verb is from Middle English levelen, from the noun.

Intonation or tone is either level, rising, or falling, marked respectively

1891, Henry Sweet, A History of English Sounds from the Earliest Period:

(phonetics) Of even tone; without rising or falling inflection; monotonic.


antonymic

antonymic (comparative more antonymic, superlative most antonymic)

more antonymic (comparative)
most antonymic (superlative)

Similarly, antonymic relationships vary by sense.

2003, M. Lynne Murphy, Semantic Relations and the Lexicon: Antonymy, Synonymy and Other Paradigms, page 30:

(semantics) Of, relating to, or being an antonym or antonyms.

enepster

of or relating to an antonym or antonyms


concord

en-noun

concord (countable and uncountable, plural concords)

From French concorde, Latin concordia, from concors (“of the same mind, agreeing”); con- + cor, cordis (“heart”). See heart, and compare accord.

(grammar) Agreement of words with one another, in gender, number, person, or case.


lateral

en-adj

lateral (comparative more lateral, superlative most lateral)

more lateral (comparative)
most lateral (superlative)

Borrowed from Latin laterālis (“belonging to the side”), from latus (“the side or flank”) + -ālis (“-al”, adjectival suffix).

af

(phonetics, phonology) (of a consonant, especially the English clear l) Pertaining to speech sounds generated by partially blocking the egress of the airstream with the tongue, leaving space on one or both sides of the occlusion for air passage.


lateral

(linguistics) A sound produced through lateral pronunciation (such as /l/ in lateral).


contract

en-verb

contract (third-person singular simple present contracts, present participle contracting, simple past and past participle contracted)

contracts (present singular third-person)
contracting (participle present)
contracted (participle past)
contracted (past)

From Middle English, from Middle French contracter, from Latin contractum, past participle of contrahere (“to bring together, to bring about, to conclude a bargain”), from con- (“with, together”) + trahere (“to draw, to pull”). The verb developed after the noun, and originally meant only "draw together"; the sense "make a contract with" developed later.

The word “cannot” is often contracted into “can’t”.

(grammar) To shorten by omitting a letter or letters or by reducing two or more vowels or syllables to one.


Yup'ik

Borrowed from Yup'ik Yup'ik (“real person”), from Proto-Eskimo *iŋuɣpiɣ, from *iŋuɣ (“human, person”).

(linguistics) A language of the Eskimo-Aleut family.

jupikki

(linguistics) A subbranch of the Eskimo-Aleut family of languages. This is the only language family known to straddle both North America and Asia. It is centered squarely in Alaska and is thought to have migrated across to Siberia a few hundred years ago.


comment

en-noun

comment (countable and uncountable, plural comments)

→ Armenian: քոմենթ (kʻomentʻ)

→ Japanese: コメント (komento)

→ Korean: 코멘트 (komenteu)

From Middle English coment, comment, from Old French coment (“commentary”), from Late Latin commentum (“comment, interpretation”), from Classical Latin commentum (“invention, fabrication”).

der

(linguistics) The part of a sentence that provides new information regarding the current theme.


atonal

en-adj

atonal (comparative more atonal, superlative most atonal)

more atonal (comparative)
most atonal (superlative)


dactyl

From Latin dactylus, from Ancient Greek δάκτυλος (dáktulos, “a finger”), three bones of the finger corresponding to three syllables.

der

—My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn't it?

1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 1: Telemachus]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC, part I [Telemachia], page 4:

A metrical foot of three syllables (— ⏑ ⏑), one long followed by two short, or one accented followed by two unaccented.


aspect

From Middle English aspect, from Latin aspectus (“look, sight; appearance”), from aspiciō (“see; catch sight of; inspect”), from ad- (“to, towards, at”) + speciō (“look, look at, behold; observe”).

suunta

position in respect to points of a compass, the sun, etc.

takoto

of the position of land in relation to the sun

(grammar) A grammatical quality of a verb which determines the relationship of the speaker to the internal temporal flow of the event which the verb describes, or whether the speaker views the event from outside as a whole, or from within as it is unfolding.


distal

en-adj

distal (comparative more distal, superlative most distal)

more distal (comparative)
most distal (superlative)

(linguistics) Far or farther from the speaker.


elide

en-verb

elide (third-person singular simple present elides, present participle eliding, simple past and past participle elided)

elides (present singular third-person)
eliding (participle present)
elided (participle past)
elided (past)

(linguistics) To cut off, as a vowel or a syllable.


iconic

en-adj

iconic (comparative more iconic, superlative most iconic)

more iconic (comparative)
most iconic (superlative)

From Late Latin īconicus, from Ancient Greek εἰκονικός (eikonikós). By surface analysis, icon + -ic.

an iconic gesture in sign language

A portrait of a person is to a considerable extent iconic, but is not completely so since the painted canvas does not have the texture of the skin, or the capacities for speech and motion, […]

1955 [1946], Charles William Morris, Signs, Language, and Behavior, G. Braziller, →ISBN, page 23:

(linguistics, semiotics) Representing something; symbolic.


labile

labile (comparative more labile, superlative most labile)

more labile (comparative)
most labile (superlative)

Borrowed from Latin lābilis (“apt to slip, transient”), from lābor, lābī (“slip; glide, flow”).

bor

(linguistics, of a verb) Able to change valency without changing its form; especially, able to be used both transitively and intransitively without changing its form.


lumper

(biology, linguistics) A scientist in one of various fields who prefers to keep categories such as species or dialects together in larger groups.


micron

From Ancient Greek μικρόν (mikrón), neuter of μικρός (mikrós, “small”).


phonon

From phono- + -on. From Ancient Greek φωνή (phōnḗ, “sound”) + -on. Modelled after photon.


medial

en-adj

medial (comparative more medial, superlative most medial)

more medial (comparative)
most medial (superlative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-medial.wav

Borrowed from Latin mediālis (“middle”), from medius (“that is in the middle or midst”) + -ālis (“-al”, adjectival suffix).

среден

Situated in or near the middle; not at either end.

(phonetics, linguistics) (of a speech sound, or a character or sequence thereof) In the middle of a word.

Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language, he expressed the important words by an initial, a medial, or a final consonant, and made scratches for all the words between; his clerks, however, understood him very well.

1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC:

(phonetics) (of a consonant) Central: produced when air flows across the center of the mouth over the tongue.


lacuna

en-noun

lacuna (plural lacunae or (obsolete) lacunæ or lacunas)

lacunae (plural)
lacunæ (obsolete plural)
lacunas (plural)

Learned borrowing from Latin lacūna (“a ditch, pit; a hollow, cavity; a gap, defect”). Doublet of lacune and lagoon.

lbor

A small blank space; a gap or vacancy; a hiatus.

(linguistics, translation studies) A language gap, which occurs when there is no direct translation in the target language for a lexical term found in the source language.


nonce

Inherited from Middle English nonse, nones, a rebracketing of Middle English to þen anes, for þen anes (to/for the once (i.e., the one occasion or instance)), from the dative singular neuter of þe. The cryptography sense is commonly said to be a contraction of number used once, although this is probably incorrect.

gl

I had thought that the term was a nonce, but it seems as if it's been picked up by other authors.


sonant

Indo-Germanic sonants and consonants


radix

Learned borrowing from Latin rādīx (“a root”). Doublet of radish.

lbor

(linguistics) A primitive word, from which other words may be derived.

корен

linguistics: word from which other words may be derived


oblique case

19. Cases of Nouns are six: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Vocative, and Ablative. As in the Latin and Greek languages, these cases are derived from the Nominative by certain rules of inflection; the Nominative being the root of all the other cases, is termed the direct case, the others are called oblique cases.

1817, Peter Edmund Laurent, An introduction to the study of German grammar; with practical exercises., London, page 13:

(grammar) Any noun case except the nominative case (and sometimes the vocative case), where the noun is the object of a verb or the object of a preposition.

թեք հոլով

any noun case except the nominative (and vocative)


lemma

non-lemma

linguistics, lexicography: canonical form of a word

From Ancient Greek λῆμμα (lêmma, “premise, assumption”), from the same root as λαμβάνω (lambánō, “I take”).

تَمْهِيدِيَّة

mathematics: proposition used mainly in the proof of some other proposition

For quotations using this term, see Citations:lemma.

(linguistics, lexicography) The canonical form of an inflected word; i.e., the form usually found as the headword in a dictionary, such as the nominative singular of a noun, the bare infinitive of a verb, etc.


servile

en-adj

servile (comparative more servile, superlative most servile)

more servile (comparative)
most servile (superlative)

From Middle English servyle, from Old French servil, servile, from Latin servīlis, from servus (“slave”).

a servile letter

(grammar) Not belonging to the original root.

(grammar) Not sounded, but serving to lengthen the preceding vowel, like the e in tune.


servile

(grammar) An element which forms no part of the original root.