WHERE DO THE WORDS COME FROM?

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLII, Issue 9421, 29 December 1921, Page 3

WHERE DO THE WORDS COME FROM?

Back m 1880 it was said that m a certain district m Old England the people used less than 800 words to express all their thoughts and needs. Yet your English dictionary defines and explains more than 450,000 words. The new editions will bring this to more than 500,000. Where do all the new words come from? What use are they any way? Bible truths are expressed m about 6000 words, and Shakespeare m running the gamut of human emotion, needed only 15,000. There seems to be an epidemic of new words. This is m a great part due to the war, science and faster communication. Our language began to show sign of rapid growth about three centuries ago. This was at the same time that modern science began to be exploited. New religions and new political creeds came into being at about the same time^ these all needed new words with which to define themselves. Travel from one country to another always results m -the introduction of new words. * The arts and sciences hayfe taken, oyer. niany of the old Latin and Greek words, and these are adopted into our language. Commercial expansion and big business have coined new words. ¥c have radio activity, telegraphy, telephony, meteorology, etymology, with their families of newborn expressions. The automobile has given us words of which our best educated grand parents never heard. Finance, engineering, • eugenics, and. even the soap ,box orators have contributed their share. There were no Bolshevists nor Soviets m Noah Webster's time. ' The Great War and aviation produced many more new words; not only m this country, but wherever the tides of conflict rose. We have "dud," f'sniperscope," "tailspin," and other hybrid French-English words brought from overseas. Our boys, too, left many new world terms among the people with whom they associated.