This is my summary of the second of 36 video lectures by Professor Anne Curzan that I bought from "The Great Courses" online. This lecture entitled, "The Life of a Word, from Birth to Death," covers not only the birth and sometimes the death of words, but also why some words become archaic while other words die.
Words that have died due to lack of use and were deleted by major dictionary (these deletions approximate the date of death) include 'wittol' (a man who tolerates his wife's infidelity - a contented cuckold); aerodrome (born and died within 100 years); fremian (to do) died from lack of use and buried by deletion from major dictionaries.
Some words that are no longer actively used find their refuge in our archaic (and sometimes passive) vocabulary because they are in enduring legacy literature, such as writings by Shakespeare, Marlowe and Milton, including - wittol; betimes (shortly); and huger-mugger (disorderly).
The birth of words can include:
– Words unchanged since the inception of the language, such as heart, head, moon, son and the pronoun I. (There is an approximate date of birth [DOB])
– A prefix added to a word creates a new word, such as multislacking - the practice of using a computer at work for tasks or activities that are not related to one’s job: (Approx. DOB in literature)
– Created words, such as Googol - a very large number or ten to the one hundredth power. (1938) and guesstimate - originally a noun, expanded to a verb. (1936)
– Words borrowed from other languages than Latin or Greek: chutzpah; schadenfreude. (Approx. DOB)
Curzan introduced 'morpheme,' which is the smallest unit of meaning of words and is indivisible whether the word is free standing or not. For example, e- as in e-mail or e-zine is a morpheme but is not free standing. Cat and dog are morphemes and are free standing.
What makes a word, such as cat?
– Has to have agreed community mutual meaning and includes the concept of a cat (catness) more then an actual cat.
– Is free standing. (Thus, "e-" would not be a word)
– Refers to one thing.
Some created words, such as 'gonna' (a future intention) can have a different meaning then 'going to' (a direction) and can be considered a new word. The concept of a word must be a community convention that we all agree upon, But even this meaning can drift and morph into another concept because there is no sound symbolism in the word. Flirt originally meant to move from one thing or place to another carelessly before it morphed into a description of romantic-encounter behavior.
Sound symbolism, or onomatopoeia, defies drift because the sound carries meaning. It describes or is inherent in the word: such as woof, meow, ring, bang, clank, or clang. Also, there are some negative sounds, such as gr (growl, grouse, grouch, grumble), or sl (slime, slither, slug). However, as usual, there are exceptions: slim, sleek, slender, etc.
Idiomatic expressions, such as "to lay an egg," have meaning of their own and can be considered new phrases that do not refer to the words in the expression.
Next lecture (3):
– Who decides when to add or delete words from a dictionary and how do they assign meaning?
– Would you add 'yada yada' or 'yada yada yada' to a dictionary, and what meaning would you assign it?
– How about 'irregardless'?
