A glossary of terms used in the body of this dictionary. See also Wiktionary:Glossary, which contains terms used elsewhere in the Wiktionary community and Appendix:Glossary of rhetoric, which explains commonly used rhetorical terms.

Table of Contents: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

B

back-formation A term formed by removing an apparent or real prefix or suffix from an older term; for example, the noun pea arose because the final /z/ sound in pease sounded like a plural suffix. Similarly, the verb edit is a back-formation from the earlier noun editor. Not to be confused with clipping, which just shortens a word without changing meaning or part of speech. backronym A word that is either not an acronym but is taken to be one and for which a full form is invented by back-formation, or is an acronym and for which an alternative full form is invented by back-formation. backslang A form of slang in which the spelling of words is reversed. bahuvrihi Nominal compound in which the first part modifies the second and neither part alone conveys the intended meaning. barytone With the stress elsewhere than upon the final syllable. Compare with oxytone, paroxytone, and proparoxytone. BC Before Christ. Year-numbering system equivalent to BCE. BCE Before the Common Era. Year-numbering system equivalent to BC. AD is expressed as CE. To automatically switch most dates to use the "BC"/"AD" style, visit WT:Per-browser preferences. blend A word or name that combines two words, typically starting with the start of one word and ending with the end of another, such as smog (from smoke and fog) or Wiktionary (from wiki and dictionary). Many blends are portmanteaus. borrowing, borrowed See loanword. bowdlerization The removal, from a text, of words or phrases that are considered offensive or vulgar.

C

D

Of or relating to a dialect. Not linguistically standard.

E

F

G

gemination A phenomenon when a consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than is done normally. gender A way of classifying nouns in some languages. In such languages, each noun has a specific gender (often determined by its meaning and/or form), and other words (especially adjectives and pronouns) will often change form to agree with the noun's gender. See also noun class. genericized trademark A successful brand name or trademark that has come to refer to the generic class of objects rather than the specific brand type. genitive case A case that expresses possession or relation, equivalent to the English of. gerund Any of various non-finite verb forms in various languages. In English, a "gerund" is a verb in its -ing form when used in a way that resembles the use of a noun. In other languages it often functions as an adverb to form adverbial phrases or the continuous tense. grave accent A diacritic mark ( ` ) used in many languages to distinguish the pronunciations of vowels.

H

I

J

jussive mood In certain languages (e.g. Hebrew, Arabic and Esperanto), a mood of a verb used to indicate a command, permission or agreement with a request (distinct from the imperative).

K

Katharevousa The classically based artificial (standardized) Greek language created at the start of Greece's independence from the Ottoman Empire. It was used for all formal and official purposes until 1976. (Note: In Wiktionary, Katharevousa terms are entered under (modern) Greek.) (See Katharevousa on Wikipedia. Wikipedia Kulturwort A type of Wanderwort which is specific to a particular culture or which is spread by an influential cross-cultural phenomenon. Kulturworts (or Kulturwörter) are often names of products distributed by trade and religious or ideological terms.

L

locative case, loc. "Locative". A case used to indicate place, or the place where, or wherein. It corresponds roughly to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". Some languages use the same locative case construct to indicate when, so the English phrase "in summer" would use the locative case construct. locative-qualitative case Nouns in the form of the locative-qualitative case are qualifiers in the sentence and signify the locational or temporal mark of the qualified word. The qualifier is not specific but general or universalized. see Appendix:Uyghur nouns. loosely Indicates an imprecise use of words; short for loosely speaking. Contrast strict or narrow sense; strictly.

M

N

O

P

p. post or after, often used in quotations. Hence, a quotation from "p. 1924" is a quotation from no earlier than 1924. plural. palatalization In some cases, the state or quality of being palatalized, i.e. of pronouncing a sound with the tongue against the palate of the mouth that normally is not so pronounced. Some languages, such as Russian and Irish, have pairs of palatalized and unpalatalized consonant phonemes.

R

relative clause A subordinate clause that modifies a noun. In The man who I saw yesterday is leaving today, the clause who I saw yesterday is a relative clause. In English, relative clauses are often introduced by a relative pronoun such as who, which or that, but other languages often have different strategies for marking relative clauses. (see Relative clause on Wikipedia. Wikipedia respelling A different spelling of a word, especially to show its pronunciation. retronym A new word or phrase coined for an old object or concept whose original name has become used for something else or is no longer unique (such as acoustic guitar where guitar used to mean this but can now also refer to an electric guitar). rhetoric 1. The art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing. 2. A string of words that are designed to impress or confuse, rather than communicate. See also Appendix:Glossary of rhetoric. rhetorical question A question to which the speaker does not expect an answer Romanization, Romanisation Transliteration of a string in a non-Latin script into the Latin or Roman one: for instance, συγγνώμη can be romanized as singnómi. root The part of a word that forms its core and gives its most basic meaning; also the part of the word that is left when all affixes are removed. For example, in insubordination, the root is ord, while in unspeakableness it is speak. The root is often the first part of the word (as in Uralic and often in Indo-European languages), but it may also be the last part, or it may only consist of the consonants of the word (as in the Afroasiatic languages).

S

T

U

UK UK English, that is, the English of the United Kingdom. unadapted borrowing A loanword that has not been conformed to the morpho-syntactic, phonological and/or phonotactical rules of the target language. For example, English cubiculum is an unadapted borrowing from Latin cubiculum, while English cubicle is a standard borrowing from the same Latin word. uncomparable, not comparable (of adjectives) unable to be compared, or lacking a comparative and superlative function. See comparable. Examples of adjectives that are not comparable: annual, first, extra, satin, six-figure. uncountable, uncountable noun, mass noun A noun that cannot be used freely with numbers or the indefinite article, and which therefore usually takes no plural form. For example, the English noun information is a mass noun, and at least in its principal senses is uncountable in most varieties of English. For those senses, we cannot say that we have *one information, nor that we have *many information (or *many informations). Similarly, the main sense of butter is the uncountable sense, so the plural form butters is seldom used, although it occasionally is used to mean "types of butter" (many herb butters contain garlic) or "[packets of] butter" (the latter represents a class of exceptions in which uncountable nouns may be used in the plural form as an implicit reference to the container: get me a water, order two sodas, have a few beers). Many languages do not distinguish between countable and uncountable nouns. Antonym: countable, or count noun. undeclinable see: indeclinable univerbation A single word formed from a fixed expression of several words. For example, the single word albeit comes from the Middle English expression al be it, in which al means although. usage notes Additional information on current and historic use of the term in written or spoken language.

V

W

Wanderwort or wanderword A wordform which has spread over a substantial area, or to many regions, outside of that of its language of origin, typically due to cultural exchange resulting from travel and trade. Wanderworts are a type of loanword, but a Wanderwort may or may not be an areal word. See also Kulturwort. Contrast strata. weak pronoun A pronoun of one syllable which is dependent on another word and cannot be used on its own; sometimes called clitic. Compare with emphatic or strong. weak verb In Germanic languages, a verb that forms the past tense using a suffix containing a dental consonant (d, t, ð or similar). Verbs of this type are considered "regular" in most Germanic languages, but there are also irregular weak verbs, such as English think, thought and have, had. Contrast strong verb, preterite-present verb. WMF Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., the parent organization of Wiktionary and other projects. women's speech In certain languages (for example, Karajá language), men and women use or historically used distinct words and inflected forms.

X

X-SAMPA Extended SAMPA, a system for representing the full International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in plain text (ASCII). For a template that converts X-SAMPA to IPA, see {{x2i}} .

Y

Z