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Neologism

Neologism

A neologism is word, term, or phrase which has been recently created ("coined") —often to apply to new concepts, or to reshape older terms in newer language form. Neologisms are especially useful in identifying inventions, new phenomena, or old ideas which have taken on a new cultural context. Neologisms are by definition "new," and as such are often directly attributable to a specific individual, publication, period or event. The term "neologism" was itself coined around 1800; so for some time in the early 19th Century, the word "neologism" was itself a neologism. It can also refer to an existing word or phrase which has been assigned a new meaning.

Changing culture

Neologisms tend to occur more often in cultures which are rapidly changing, and also in situations where there is easy and fast propagation of information. They are often created by combining existing words (see compound noun and adjective) or by giving words new and unique suffixes or prefixes. Those which are portmanteaux are shortened. Neologisms can also be created through abbreviation or acronym, by intentionally rhyming with existing words, or simply through playing with sounds. Neologisms often become popular by way of mass media, the Internet, or word of mouth (see also Wiktionary's Neologisms:unstable or Protologism pages for a wiki venue of popularizing newly coined words). Every word in a language was, at some time, a neologism, though most of these ceased to be such through time and acceptance. Neologisms often become accepted parts of the language. Other times, however, they disappear from common usage. Whether or not a neologism continues as part of the language depends on many factors, probably the most important of which is acceptance by the public. Acceptance by linguistic experts and incorporation into dictionaries also plays a part, as does whether the phenomenon described by a neologism remains current, thus continuing to need a descriptor. It is unusual, however, for a word to enter common use if it does not resemble another word or words in an identifiable way. (In some cases however, strange new words succeed because the idea behind them is especially memorable or exciting). When a word or phrase is no longer "new," it is no longer a neologism. Neologisms may take decades to become "old," though. Opinions differ on exactly how old a word must be to no longer be considered a neologism; cultural acceptance probably plays a more important role than time in this regard.

Cultural acceptance

After being coined, neologisms invariably undergo scrutiny by the public and by linguists to determine their suitability to the language. Many are accepted very quickly; others attract opposition. Language experts sometimes object to a neologism on the grounds that a suitable term for the thing described already exists in the language. Non-experts who dislike the neologism sometimes also use this argument, deriding the neologism as "abuse and ignorance of the language." Some neologisms, especially those dealing with sensitive subjects, are often objected to on the grounds that they obscure the issue being discussed, and that such a word's novelty often leads a discussion away from the root issue and onto a sidetrack about the meaning of the neologism itself. Proponents of a neologism see it as being useful, and also helping the language to grow and change; often they perceive these words as being a fun and creative way to play with a language. Also, the semantic precision of most neologisms, along with what is usually a straightforward syntax, often makes them easier to grasp by people who are not native speakers of the language. The outcome of these debates, when they occur, has a great deal of influence on whether a neologism eventually becomes an accepted part of the language. Linguists may sometimes delay acceptance, for instance by refusing to include the neologism in dictionaries; this can sometimes cause a neologism to die out over time. Nevertheless if the public continues to use the term, it always eventually sheds its status as a neologism and enters the language even over the objections of language experts.

Versions of neologisms

- Unstable - Extremely new, being proposed, or being used only by a very small subculture.
- Diffused - Having reached a significant audience, but not yet having gained acceptance.
- Stable - Having gained recognizable and probably lasting acceptance.

Types of neologism

- Scientific — words or phrases created to describe new scientific discoveries or inventions. Examples:
- beetle bank (early 1990s)
- black hole (1968)
- laser (1960)
- prion
- quark (1964)
- radar (1941)
- posterized
- Science fiction concepts created to describe new, futuristic ideas. Examples:
- Ringworld (1971)
- Dyson Sphere (circa 1960)
- Political — words or phrases created to make some kind of political or rhetorical point, sometimes perhaps with an eye to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Example:
- dog-whistle politics (1990)
- soccer moms (1992)
- pro-life
- pro-choice
- meritocracy (1958)
- political correctness (1970)
- sie and hir (pronouns)
- homophobia (1969)
- genocide
- Chindia (2004)
- Some political neologisms, however, are intended to convey a negative point of view. Example: brutalitarian
- Pop-culture — words or phrases evolved from mass media content or used to describe popular culture phenomena (these may be considered a subsection of slang). Examples:
- blog
- carb
- prequel
- jumping the shark
- Chuck Cunningham syndrome
- Keyshawning
- Baldwin (a good-looking man, such as one of the Baldwin family of actors)
- Scooby Gang (a group which humorously resembles the teens on the cartoon Scooby-Doo)
- From "D'Oh" to "Scotchtoberfest" - many neologisms from The Simpsons are now used in real life. For a long list see Made-up words in The Simpsons
- Imported — words or phrases originating in another language. Typically they are used to express ideas that have no equivalent term in the native language. (See loanword.) Examples:
- tycoon
- potato (1565)
- zen (1727)
- ao dai (1960s)
- Vietcong (1960s)
- Tet (1968)
- anime (1988)
- détente (1960s)
- manga
- Trademarks are often neologisms to ensure they are distinguished from other brands. If legal trademark protection is lost, the neologism may enter the language as a genericized trademark. Example: Laundromat, Hoover
- Nonce words — words coined and used only for a particular occasion, usually for a special literary effect.
- Inverted — words that are derived from spelling (and pronouncing) a standard word backwards. Example: redrum
- Paleologism - a word that is alleged to be a neologism but turns out to be a long-used (if obscure) word. Used ironically.
Neologisms in literature
Many neologisms have come from popular literature, and tend to appear in different forms. Most commonly, they are simply taken from a word used in the narrative of a book; for instance, McJob from Douglas Coupland's Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture and cyberspace from William Gibson's Neuromancer. Sometimes the title of the book will become the neologism. For instance, Catch-22 (from the title of Joseph Heller's novel) and Generation X (from the title of Coupland's novel) have become part of the vocabulary of many English-speakers. Also worthy of note is the case in which the author's name becomes the neologism, although the term is sometimes based on only one work of that author. This includes such words as Orwellian (from George Orwell, referring to his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four) and Ballardesque (from J.G. Ballard, author of Crash). Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle was the container of the Bokononism family of Nonce words. Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky" has been called "the king of neologistic poems" as it incorporated some dozens of invented words. The early modern English prose writings of Sir Thomas Browne 1605-1682 are the source of many neologisms as recorded by the OED.
Quotation
: "Yesterday's neologisms, like yesterday's jargon, are often today's essential vocabulary."
: – Academic Instincts, 2001^{[http://www.wordspy.com/waw/garber-marjorie.asp]}
See also

- buzzword
- doublespeak
- euphemism
- jargon
- newspeak
- Langmaker
- portmanteau
- propaganda
- protologism
- retronym
- onomatopoeia
- siamese twins (English language)
External links, resources, references

English

- Fowler, H.W., "The King's English," Chapter I. Vocabulary, [http://www.bartleby.com/116/103.html Neologism], 2nd ed. 1908.
Information

- Root knowledge : [http://folk.uio.no/iroggen/Root_knowledge.html The need for neologisms]
- Neologism [http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/history.html History & Evaluation]
- International Dictionary of Literary Terms : [http://www.ditl.info/art/definition.php?term=3101 Neologisms]
Wiktionary

- Wiktionary: Neologisms
- Wiktionary: Neologisms unstable
- Wiktionary: Neologisms diffused
- Wiktionary: Neologisms stable
Indices

- [http://www.neologisms.us The Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms]
- [http://rdues.uce.ac.uk/neologisms.shtml Neologisms in Journalistic Text]
- [http://involution.org/neologisms.html Lexicon of Neologism]
- [http://web.bham.ac.uk/johnstf/neo.htm Internet Neologisms]
- [http://www.oneletterwords.com Neologisms in the Dictionaries of All-Consonant and All-Vowel Words]
- [http://www.wordspy.com/ wordspy.com]
- [http://www.langmaker.com/db/eng_a2z_index.htm Neologisms A-Z]
- [http://www.unwords.com/ unwords.com]
- [http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words04/neologisms/a.html Collected by Rice Universtiy linguistics class, 2003]
- [http://www.figarospeech.com It Figures-Figures of Speech] ----
Miscellaneous
In psychology, a neologism is a word invented by a person suffering from a language disorder, which may occur in the context of psychosis (see thought disorder) or aphasia acquired after brain damage ; clinicians can sometimes use these neologisms, which often have meaning only to the subject, as clues to determine the nature of the disorder. In theology, a neologism is a relatively new doctrine (for example, rationalism). In this sense, a neologist is an innovator in the area of a doctrine or belief system, and is often considered heretical or subversive by the mainstream church. Category:Types of words Category:Word coinage

Word
A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together. Typically a word will consist of a root or stem and zero or more affixes. Words can be combined to create phrases, clauses and sentences. A word consisting of two or more stems joined together is called a compound. compound]]
Difficulty in defining the term
The precise definition of what a word is depends on which language the definition is for, and the dividing line between words and phrases is not always clear. In most writing systems, a word is usually marked out in the text by interword separation such as spaces or word dividers used in some languages such as Amharic. In other languages such as Chinese and Japanese, and in many ancient languages such as Sanskrit, word boundaries are not shown. Even in writing systems that use interword separation, word boundaries are not always clear; for example, even though ice cream is written like two words, it is a single compound because it cannot be separated by another morpheme or rephrased like iced cream or cream of ice. Likewise, a proper noun is a word, however long it is. A space may not be even the main morpheme boundary in a word; the word New Yorker is a compound of New York and -er, not of New and Yorker. In English, many common words have historically progressed from being written as two separate words (e.g. to day) to hyphenated (to-day) to a single word (today), a process which is still ongoing, as in the common spelling of all right as alright.
Words in different classes of languages
In synthetic languages, a single word stem (for example, love) may have a number of different forms (for example, loves, loving, and loved). However, these are not usually considered to be different words, but different forms of the same word. In these languages, words may be considered to be constructed from a number of morphemes (such as love and -s). In polysynthetic languages, the number of morphemes per word can become so large that the word performs the same grammatical role as a phrase or clause in less synthetic languages (for example, in Yupik, angyaghllangyugtuq means "he wants to acquire a big boat"). These large-construction words are still single words, because they contain only one content word; the other morphemes are grammatical bound morphemes, which cannot stand alone. Matters seem easier for analytic languages. For these languages, a word usually consists of only a root morpheme, which is often single-syllable. However, it is common even in those languages to combine roots into a compound stem.
Complexity of word boundaries in speech
In spoken language, the distinction of individual words is even more complex: short words are often run together, and long words are often broken up. Spoken French has some of the features of a polysynthetic language: je ne le sais pas ("I do not know it") tends towards //. As the majority of the world's languages are not written, the scientific determination of word boundaries becomes important.
Determining word boundaries
There are five ways to determine where the word boundaries of spoken language should be placed: ;Potential pause :A speaker is told to repeat a given sentence slowly, allowing for pauses. The speaker will tend to insert pauses at the word boundaries. However, this method is not foolproof: the speaker could easily break up polysyllabic words. ;Indivisibility :A speaker is told to say a sentence out loud, and then is told to say the sentence again with extra words added to it. Thus, I have lived in this village for ten years might become I and my family have lived in this little village for about ten or so years. These extra words will tend to be added in the word boundaries of the original sentence. However, some languages have infixes, which are put inside a word. Similarly, some have separable affixes; in the German sentence "Ich komme gut zu Hause an," the verb ankommen is separated. ;Minimal free forms :This concept was proposed by Leonard Bloomfield. Words are thought of as the smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by themselves. This correlates phonemes (units of sound) to lexemes (units of meaning). However, some written words are not minimal free forms, as they make no sense by themselves (for example, the and of). ;Phonetic boundaries :Some languages have particular rules of pronunciation that make it easy to spot where a word boundary should be. For example, in a language that regularly stresses the last syllable of a word (like Hebrew), a word boundary is likely to fall after each stressed syllable. Another example can be seen in a language that has vowel harmony (like Turkish): the vowels within a given word share the same quality, so a word boundary is likely to occur whenever the vowel quality changes. However, not all languages have such convenient phonetic rules, and even those that do present the occasional exceptions. ;Semantic units :Much like the abovementioned minimal free forms, this method breaks down a sentence into its smallest semantic units. However, language often contains words that have little semantic value (and often play a more grammatical role), or semantic units that are compound words. In practice, linguists apply a mixture of all these methods to determine the word boundaries of any given sentence. Even with the careful application of these methods, the exact definition of a word is often still elusive.
External links

- [http://www.sussex.ac.uk/linguistics/documents/essay_-_what_is_a_word.pdf What Is a Word?] (PDF)
- [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=word Urban Dictionary: word], used as a slang Category:Linguistic morphology Category:Syntax ja:語 simple:Word

Phrase

A phrase (Greek φράση, sentence, expression, see also strophe) is a group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. For example the house at the end of the street (example 1) is a phrase. It acts like a noun. It contains the phrase at the end of the street (example 2), which acts like an adjective. Example 2 could be replaced by white, to make the phrase the white house. Examples 1 and 2 contain the phrase the end of the street (example 3) which acts like a noun. It could be replaced by the cross-roads to give the house at the cross-roads. Each phrase has a word called its head which links it to the rest of the sentence. In English the head is often the first word of the phrase. Phrases may be classified by the type of head they take
- Prepositional phrase (PP) with a preposition as head (e.g. in love, over the rainbow). Languages that use postpositions instead have postpositional phrases. The two types are sometimes commonly referred to as adpositional phrases.
- Noun phrase (NP) with a noun as head (e.g. the black cat, a cat on the mat)
- Verb phrase (VP) with a verb as head (e.g. eat cheese, jump up and down)
- Adjectival phrase with an adjective as head (e.g. full of toys)
- Adverbial phrase with adverb as head (e.g. very carefully)

Formal definition

A phrase is a syntactic structure which has syntactic properties derived from its head. For example the house at the end of the street is a noun phrase. Its head is house, and its syntactic properties come from that fact. It contains prepositional phrase at the end of the street, which acts as an adjunct. At the end of the street could be replaced by another adjunct, such as white, to make the phrase the white house. Of the street, another prepositional phrase, acts as a complement of end. Each phrase has a word called its head which gives it its syntactic properties.

Complexity

A complex phrase consists of several words, whereas a simple phrase consists of only one word. This terminology is especially often used with verb phrases:
- simple past and present are simple verb, which require just one verb
- complex verb have one or two aspects added, hence require additional two or three words "Complex", which is phrase-level, is often confused with "compound", which is word-level. However, there are certain phenomena that formally seem to be phrases but semantically are more like compounds, like "women's magazines", which has the form of a possessive noun phrase, but which refers (just like a compound) to one specific lexeme (i.e. a magazine for women and not some magazine owned by a woman).

Semiotic approaches to the concept of "phrase"

In more semiotic approaches to language, such, as for instance, the more cognitivist versions of construction grammar, a phrasal structure is not only a certain formal combination of word types whose features are inherited from the head. Here each phrasal structure also expresses some type of conceptual content, be it specific or abstract. For example prepositional phrases express a figure-ground relation in which the prepositional complement is the ground, the preposition itself specifies the relation, and the precedent element is the figure. Thus, in semiotic approaches to phrasal structure, a phrase not only has a specific formal configuration, but is also characterized by a recognizable (abstract or specific) semantic content. See phrase structure rules, syntax, grammar. See also: Proverb

Other uses

In the context of search engines and other computer programs, a phrase is a sequence of words, as opposed to just a set of words. For use in the context of music, see Phrase (music). Category:Syntax simple:Phrase

Inventions

:In music, an invention is a short composition with two or three part counterpoint. See Invention (music) In general terms, an invention is an object, process or technique which displays an element of novelty. In certain circumstances, legal protection may be granted to an invention by way of a patent.

What drives the process of invention?

Over time, humanity has invented objects and methods for accomplishing tasks which fulfill some purpose in a new or different manner, usually with the objective of realising that purpose in a faster, more efficient, easier or cheaper way. Although it is evident that people do invent, the circumstances which facilitate or optimise the development of inventions is less clear. One school of thought, popularized in the phrase "necessity is the mother of invention", argues that in essence, lack of resources leads to invention, while the opposing school of thought argues that it is only an excess of resources which has this result. However, the actual position may not be understood simply by reference to one or the other of these perspectives.

From idea to invention

Although a new or useful object or method may be developed to fulfill a specific purpose, the original idea may never be fully realised as a working invention, perhaps because the concept is in some way unrealistic or impractical. A "castle in the air" or a "pie in the sky" (or "castles in Spain") may refer to a creative idea which does not reach fruition due to practical considerations. The history of invention is full of such castles, as inventions are not necessarily invented in the order that is most useful. For example, the design of the parachute was worked out before the invention of powered flight. Other inventions simply solve problems for which there is no economic incentive to provide a solution. On the other hand, any barriers to implementation may simply be an issue of engineering or technology which can be overcome in time with scientific advances. History is also replete with examples of ideas which have taken some time to reach physical reality, as demonstrated by various ideas originally attributed to Leonardo da Vinci which are now expressed in everyday physical form.

Invention and innovation

Following the terminology of political economist Joseph Schumpeter, an invention differs from an innovation. While an invention is merely theoretical (even though the legal protection of a patent may have been sought), an innovation is an invention that has been put into practice. However, this conflicts with the theory of social anthropologists and other social sciences researchers. In social sciences, an innovation is anything new to a culture. The innovation does not need to have been adopted. The theory for adoption (or non-adoption) of an innovation is called diffusion of innovations. This theory, first put forth by Everett Rogers, considers the likelihood that an innovation will ever be adopted and the taxonomy of persons likely to adopt it or spur its adoption. Gabriel Tarde also dealt with the adoption of innovations in his Laws of Imitation.

External links

- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/browse/inventions/ Inventions] in [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition
- [http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/inventions/inventions.html List of PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) Notable Inventions] (on the WIPO web site)
- [http://www.inventionindex.com/ Invention Index]
- [http://www.inventions.org/ Inventors Assistance League] (Non-profit organization operating since 1963) Category:History of technology Category:Technology ja:発明

Ideas

For a thought or concept, see idea. For the Canadian radio program, see Ideas.

Compound noun and adjective

A compound is a word (lexeme) that consists of more than one free morpheme. A certain type of compound (endocentric) consists of a head, i.e. the categorical part that contains the basic meaning of the whole compound, and modifiers, which restrict this meaning. For example, the English compound doghouse, where house is the head and dog is the modifier, is understood as a house intended for a dog. Obviously, an endocentric compound tends to be of the same part of speech (word class) as its head. In other cases, the compound does not have a head, and its meaning cannot be transparently guessed from its constituent parts. For example, the English compound white-collar is neither a kind of collar nor a white thing. In the Sanskrit tradition, this is called a bahuvrihi compound; another (modern) term is exocentric compound, meaning that the concept represented by the compound lies outside its parts. In an exocentric compound, the word class is determined lexically, disregarding the class of the constituents. For example, a must-have is not a verb but a noun. Composition should not be confused with derivation, where bound morphemes are added to free ones. A special kind of composition is incorporation, of which noun incorporation into a verbal root (as in English backstabbing, breastfeed, etc.) is most prevalent (see below).

Formation of compounds

Compound formation rules vary widely across language types. In a perfectly analytic language, compounds are simply elements strung together without any markers. In English, for example, science fiction is a compound noun that consists of two nouns and no markers. A corresponding example from the Mandarin language would be Hànyǔ (漢語; simplified: 汉语), or "the Han Chinese language", which also consists of two nouns and no markers. In a more synthetic language, the relationship between the elements of a compound may be marked. In German, for example, the compound Kapitänspatent consists of the lexemes Kapitän (sea captain) and Patent (license) joined by the genitive case marker -s. In the Latin language, the lexeme paterfamilias contains the (archaic) genitive form familias of the lexeme pater (father). Agglutinative languages tend to create very long words with derivational morphemes. Compounds may or may not require the use of derivational morphemes also. The well-known Japanese compound 神風 kamikaze consists only of the nouns kami ("god, spirit") and kaze ("wind"). The longest compounds in the world may be found in Finnish and Germanic languages, such as Swedish. German examples include Kontaktlinsenverträglichkeitstest ("contact-lens compatibility test") and the jocular Rheindampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsstellvertreter ("Rhine steamship-company vice-captain"). In theory, even longer compounds are possible, but they are usually not found in actual discourse. Conpounds can be rather long, when translating technical document from English to for example Swedish. "motion estimation search range settings" can be directly translated to "rörelseuppskattningssökningsrymdsinställning", the length of the word is theoretically unlimited.

Compound types in different languages

Compound nouns

Most natural languages have compound nouns and sometimes compound adjectives. The position of the head within a compound often depends on the branching tendency of the language, i. e. the most common order of constituents in phrases where nouns are modified by adjectives, by possessors, by other nouns, etc. While Germanic languages, for example, are left-branching when it comes to noun phrases (the modifiers come before the head), the Romance languages are usually right-branching. In French, compound nouns are often formed by left-hand heads with prepositional components inserted before the modifier, as in chemin-de-fer ("railway", lit. "road of iron") and moulin à vent ("windmill", lit. "mill (that works)-by-means-of wind").

Verb-noun compounds

In Spanish there is a very common type of compound noun consisting of a verb (conjugated for third person singular, present tense, indicative mood) followed by a noun (usually plural), such as rascacielos (modelled on "skyscraper", lit. "scratches skies") and sacacorchos ("corkscrew", lit. "removes corks"). These compounds are formally invariable in the plural (but in many cases they have been reanalyzed as plural forms, and a singular form has appeared). French and Italian have these same compounds with the noun in the singular form: Italian grattacielo ("skyscraper"), French grille-pain ("toaster", lit. "toasts bread"). English prefers another type of verb-noun compounds, in which an argument of the verb is incorporated into the verb, which is then usually turned into a gerund, such as breastfeeding, finger-pointing, etc. The noun is usually an instrumental complement.

Compound adpositions

Compound prepositions formed by prepositions and nouns are common in English and the Romance languages (consider English on top of, Spanish encima de, etc.). Japanese shows the same pattern, except the word order is the opposite (with postpositions): no naka (lit. "of inside on", i.e. "on the inside of").

Other examples

Spanish:
- Ciencia-ficción ("science fiction"): ciencia, "science", + ficción, "fiction" (This word is a calque from the English expression science fiction. In English, the head of a compound word is the last morpheme: science fiction. Conversely, the Spanish head is located at the front, so ciencia ficción sounds like a kind of fictional science rather than scientific fiction.)
- Ciempiés ("centipede"): cien, "hundred", + pies, "feet"
- Ferrocarril ("railway"): ferro, "iron", + carril, "lane" Italian:
- Centopiedi ("centipede"): cento, "hundred", + piedi, "feet"
- Ferrovia ("railway"): ferro, "iron", + via, "way"
- Tergicristallo ("windscreen"): tergere, "to wash", + cristallo, "crystal, (pane of) glass" German:
- Wolkenkratzer ("skyscraper"): wolken, "clouds", + kratzer, "scraper"
- Eisenbahn ("railway"): Eisen, "iron", + bahn, "track"
- Kraftfahrzeug ("automobile"): Kraft, "power", + fahren/fahr, "drive", + zeug, "machinery"
- Stacheldraht ("barbed wire"): stachel, "barb/barbed", + draht, "wire" Finnish:
- sanakirja ("dictionary"): sana, "word", + kirja, "book"
- tietokone ("computer"): tieto, "knowledge, data", + kone, "machine"
- keskiviikko ("Wednesday"): keski, "middle", + viikko, "week"
- maailma ("world"): maa, "land", + ilma, "air"

Suffix

Suffix has meanings in linguistics, nomenclature and computer science.

Linguistics

In linguistics, a suffix is an affix that follows the morphemes to which it can attach. Example: establish (verb) + -ment (suffix) —> establishment (noun). (See derivation and also the list of English suffixes.)

Nomenclature

- A suffix is a style at the end of a person's name which gives additional identifying information about the person. These may be academic, professional, honorary or social.
- In the United States, callsigns for broadcast stations may have a suffix of -FM, -AM, -TV, -LP, or -CA, if the root callsign is the same as another station's. The -HD and -DT suffixes for digital television have been dropped.

Computer science

A suffix of a string

T = t_1 t_2 \dots t_n

is a string

P = p_1 p_2 \dots p_m

such that

t_ \dots t_ = p_1 \dots p_

. T = BANANA |||| P = NANA

Portmanteau

:For other uses, see (disambiguation). A portmanteau (plural: portmanteaus or portmanteaux) is a term in linguistics that refers to a word or morpheme that fuses two or more grammatical functions. A folk usage of portmanteau refers to a word that is formed by combining both sounds and meanings from two or more words. In linguistics, these false portmanteaux are called blends.

Etymology

This word was coined by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, in which it is likened to the French word "porte-manteaux" for a type of travelling case or suitcase. Carroll has Humpty Dumpty say, "Well, slithy means lithe and slimy... You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word." Carroll used such words to humorous effect in his poems, especially Jabberwocky, which Humpty Dumpty is explaining to Alice. "Portmanteau word" was the original phrase used to describe such words (as listed in dictionaries published as late as the early 1990s), but this has since been abbreviated to simply "portmanteau" as the term (and the type of words it describes) gained popularity. "Portmanteau" is rarely used for its original meaning in current English, that type of travelling case having fallen into disuse. In Queensland, Australia, it is shortened to 'Port', and used as slang for a schoolbag.

Portmanteau morphemes

A portmanteau morpheme is a morpheme that fuses two grammatical categories (see Fusional language). The classical example of such a morpheme in English is the verbal suffix -s. This particular suffix carries (i.e., ports) at least four distinct inflectional meanings and imparts each of these onto the verb's meaning:
- Singular (number)
- Third-person (person)
- Present (tense)
- Indicative (mood) Spanish verb suffixes are also exceptionally fusional, with very many portmanteaux in the Spanish inflectional system.

Portmanteau words

A portmanteau word is a word that fuses two function words. This use overlaps a bit with the folk term contraction, but linguists tend to avoid using the latter.

Folk usage

Outside linguistics, the words that are called blends are popularly labeled portmanteaux. The term portmanteau is used in a different, yet still not clearly defined sense, to refer to a blending of the parts of two or more words (generally the first part of one word and the ending of a second word) to combine their meanings into a single neologism.

External links

- [http://creativityforyou.com/portman.html Portmanteau Words]
- Category:Linguistics ja:%E3%81%8B%E3%81%B0%E3%82%93%E8%AA%9E

Abbreviation

Abbreviation (from Latin brevis "short") is strictly a shorter form of a word, but more particularly, an abbreviation is a letter or group of letters, taken from a word or words, and employed to represent them for the sake of brevity. For example, the word "abbreviation" can be abbreviated as "abbr." or "abbrev."

Types of abbreviations

Apart from the common form of shortening one word, there are other types of abbreviations. These include apocopations, syllabic abbreviations, acronyms, initialisms and portmanteaux.

Syllabic abbreviations (SAs)

A syllabic abbreviation is an abbreviation formed from (usually) initial syllables of several words, such as Interpol = International + police. Syllabic abbreviations are usually written using lower case, sometimes starting with a capital letter, and are always pronounced as words rather than letter by letter. Syllabic abbreviations should be distinguished from portmanteaus.

Usage of syllabic abbreviations in different languages

Syllabic abbreviations are not widely used in English or French. On the other hand, they prevailed in Germany under the Nazis and in the Soviet Union for naming the plethora of new bureaucratic organizations. For example, Gestapo stands for Geheime Staats-Polizei, or "secret state police". Similarly, Comintern stands for the Communist International. This has caused syllabic abbreviations to have negative connotation, notwithstanding that such abbreviations were used in Germany even before the Nazis came to power, e.g., Schupo for Schutzpolizei. Syllabic abbreviations were also typical for the German language used in the German Democratic Republic, e.g. Stasi for Staatssicherheit ("state security", the secret police) or Vopo for Volkspolizist ("people's policeman"). East Asian languages whose writing uses Chinese-originated ideograms instead of an alphabet form abbreviations similarly by using key characters from a term or phrase. For example, in Japanese the term for the United Nations, kokusai rengō (国際連合) is often abbreviated to kokuren (国連). (Such abbreviations are called ryakugo (略語) in Japanese). The classic example is, of course, shogun. The syllabic abbreviation is frequently used for universities: for instance, Beida (北大, Běidà) for Peking University (Beijing) and Tōdai (東大) for the University of Tokyo.
Usage of syllabic abbreviations in organisations
Syllabic abbreviations are prefered by the US Navy as it increases readability amidst the large number of initialisms that would otherwise have to fit into the same acronyms. Hence DESRON 6 is used (in the full capital form) to mean "Destroyer Squadron 6," while COMNAVFORLANT would be "Commander, Naval Force (in the) Atlantic."
Style conventions
In modern English there are several conventions for abbreviations and the choice may be confusing. The only rule universally accepted is that one should be consistent, and to this end publishers express their preferences in a style guide. Questions which arise include the following:
- Use of upper or lower case letters. If the original word was capitalised, then the first letter of its abbreviation should retain the capital, for example Lev. for Leviticus. When abbreviating words spelt with lower case letters, there is no consistent rule.
- Use of periods (full stops) and spaces, for example when abbreviating United States, should one write "US", "U.S." or "U. S."? Spaces are generally not used between single letter abbreviations of words in the same phrase, so one almost never encounters "U. S.". In American English, the period is usually added if the abbreviation may be interpreted as a word, though some American writers do not use a period here. There is no stop/period between letters of the same word, for example St. and not S.t. for Saint. In modern British English abbreviations are written with full stops if the word has been cut at the point of abbreviation (e.g., "Street" – "St[reet]" – becomes "St."), but not otherwise (e.g., "Saint" – "S[ain]t" – becomes "St"). Thus in the United Kingdom, titles such as "Doctor", "Mister" and "Mistress" are abbreviated as "Dr", "Mr", and "Mrs" respectively, but in Canada and the U.S. as "Dr.", "Mr." and "Mrs." respectively.
- Acronyms that were originally capitalized (with or without periods) but have since "stood the test of time" by entering the vocabulary as generic words are no longer abbreviated with capital letters nor with any periods—e.g., sonar, radar, laser, and scuba.
- Whether to add an apostrophe for a plural where the plural is not formed by doubling up the last letter: should one write CDs or CD's? The apostrophe is not needed grammatically but sometimes is added to make it clear that the s is not part of the abbreviation. Because the apostrophe most often represents possession or a contraction, some style guides prefer that it not be used at all with abbreviations, but only with individual letters—"Dot all your i's and cross all your t's!" or "Mind your p's and q's!"—or numbers—"The dyslexic student mixes up his S's and 5's." Thus numbers, such as decades, that are understood to represent other concepts, are not written with apostrophes either—e.g., "The U.S. enjoyed an economic boom in the 1990s and the Roaring ’20s", referring to decades, or "I am going to the bank to exchange four 5's for two 10's", where the 5's and 10's refer to banknotes. Conventions followed by publications and newspapers:
- Publications based in the United States tend to follow the style guides of the Chicago Manual of Style and the Associated Press. The U.S. Government follows a style guide published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.
- There is some inconsistency in abbreviation styles, however, as they are not rigorously defined by style guides. Some two-word abbreviations, like "United Nations", are abbreviated with uppercase letters and periods, and others, like "personal computer" (PC) and "compact disc" (CD), are not; rather, they are typically abbreviated without periods and in uppercase letters. A third variation is to use lowercase letters with periods; this is used by Time Magazine in abbreviating "public relations" (p.r.). Moreover, even three-word abbreviations (most U.S. publications use uppercase abbreviations without periods) are sometimes not consistently abbreviated, even within the same article.
- The New York Times is unique in having a consistent style by always abbreviating with periods: P.C., I.B.M., P.R. This is in contrast with the trend of British publications to completely make do without periods for convenience.
- Many British publications follow some of these guidelines in abbreviation:
- For the sake of convenience, many British publications, including the BBC and The Guardian, have completely done away with the use of full stops or periods in all abbreviations. These include:
- Social titles, like Ms or Mr (though these would not have had full stops in any case — see above) Capt, Prof, etc.;
- Two-letter abbreviations for countries (US, not U.S.);
- Words are seldom abbreviated with lower case letters (PR, instead of p.r., or pr)
- Abbreviations beyond three letters (full caps for all except initialisms);
- Names (e.g., FW de Klerk, GB Whiteley, Park JS). A notable exception is the Economist (e.g., Mr F. W. de Klerk)
- Scientific units.
- Acronyms are referred to with only the first letter of the abbreviation capitalised. For instance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation can be abbreviated as Nato, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome as Sars. Initialisms (which are similar to acronyms but which are not pronounced as words) are always written in capitals, for instance the British Broadcasting Corporation is abbreviated to BBC, never Bbc.
- When abbreviating scientific units, no space is added between the number and unit (e.g., 100mph, 100m, 10cm, 10ºC). Miscellaneous and general rules
- Plurals are often formed by doubling up the last letter of the abbreviation. Most of these deal with writing and publishing: MS=manuscript, MSS=manuscripts; l=line, ll=lines; p=page, pp=pages; s=section, ss=sections). This form, derived from Latin is used in Europe in many places: dd=didots. "The following (lines or pages)" is denoted by ff. One example that does not concern printing is hh=hands.
- A doubled letter also appears in abbreviations of some Welsh names, as in Welsh the double "l" is a separate sound: "Ll. George" for (late British prime minister) Lloyd George.
- Some titles, such as "Reverend" and "Honourable", are spelt out when preceded by "the", rather than as "Rev." or "Hon." respectively. This is true for most British publications, and some in the United States.
- It is usually advised to spell out the abbreviation where it is new or unfamiliar to the reader (e.g., UNESCO in a magazine about music, because it more frequently refers to another entity in another context, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).
History
After World War II, the British greatly reduced their use of the full stop and other punctuations after abbreviations in at least semi-formal writing, while the Americans more readily kept its use until more recently, and still maintain it more than Britons. The classic example, considered by their American counterparts quite curious, was the maintenance of the internal comma in a British organization of secret agents called the "Special Operations, Executive" – "S.O.,E." – which is not found in histories written after about 1960. But before that, many Britons were more scrupulous at maintaining the French form. In French, the period only follows an abbreviation if the last letter in the abbreviation is not the last letter of its antecedent: "M." is the abbreviation for "monsieur" while "Mme" is that for "Madame" and "Mlle" for "Mademoiselle". Like many other cross-channel linguistic acquisitions, many Britons readily took this up and followed this rule themselves, while the Americans took a simpler rule and applied it rigorously. Over the years, however, the lack of convention in some style guides has made it difficult to determine which two-word abbreviations should be abbreviated with periods and which should not. The U.S. media tend to abbreviate two-word abbreviations like United States (U.S.), but surprisingly, not personal computer (PC) or television (TV), which is a source of confusion. Many British publications have gradually done away with the use of periods in abbreviations completely.
Examples

- List of classical abbreviations
- List of mediaeval abbreviations
- List of abbreviations in use in 1911
- List of acronyms and initialisms
- The abbreviations used in the 1913 edition of Webster's dictionary
Abbreviation types

- Acronym and initialism
- Apocopation
- TLA
- Syllabic abbreviation
- Portmanteau
See also

- List of syllabic abbreviations
- Neologism, word, term, or phrase which has been recently created
- Internet slang, list of computing and IT abbreviations, list of medical abbreviations, list of government and military acronyms, abbreviations used in CIA World Factbook,
- ISO language code, ISO country code.
- Ditloid
External links

- [http://www.abbreviationz.com/ AbbreviationZ] acronyms, abbreviations & Initialisms directory.
- [http://www.acronyma.com/ Acronyma]—large database of acronyms and abbreviations (over 450,000 entries)
- [http://www.acronymfinder.com/ Acronym Finder]—searchable acronyms and abbreviations site (over 400,000 entries) Category:Abbreviations ja:略語 simple:Abbreviation

Acronym

Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations such as NATO, laser, or DNA, written as the initial letter or letters of words, and pronounced based on this abbreviated written form. Of the two words, acronym is the much more frequently used and known, and many dictionaries, speakers and writers refer to all abbreviations formed from initial letters as acronyms. However, some still differentiate between acronyms and initialisms: an acronym was originally a pronounceable word formed from the initial letter or letters of the constituent words, such as NATO /neɪtoʊ/ or RADAR /reɪdɑɹ/, from RAdio Detection And Ranging, while an initialism referred to an abbreviation pronounced as the names of the individual letters, such as TLA /ti.ɛl.eɪ/ or XHTML.

History

Acronyms and initialisms are a relatively new linguistic phenomenon, having only become popular during the 20th century. As literacy rates rose, the practice of referring to words by their first letters became increasingly convenient. The first recorded use of the word initialism in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is in 1899, and the first for acronym is in 1943. The word acronym comes from Greek: ακρος, akros, "topmost, extreme" + ονομα, onoma, "name". Nonetheless, earlier examples of acronyms exist. The early Christians in Rome used a fish as a symbol for Jesus in part because of an acronym—fish in Greek is ΙΧΘΥΣ (ichthus), which was said to stand for Ιησους Χριστος Θεου Υιος Σωτηρ (Iesous CHristos THeou (h)Uios Soter: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour). Evidence of this interpretation dates from the second and third centuries and is preserved in the catacombs of Rome. Initialisms are known to have been used in Rome dating back even earlier than the Christian era. For example, the official name for the Roman Empire (and the Republic before it) was abbreviated as SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus), showing a clear precedent. Acronyms have been widely used in Hebrew since at least the Middle Ages. Several important rabbis are referred to with acronyms of their names. For example, Baal Shem Tov is called Besht. The word Tanakh is also an acronym. Acronyms and initialisms often occur in jargon or as names of organizations because they often serve as abbreviations of long terms that are frequently referenced, so a shortened form is desirable. Militaries and government agencies frequently employ acronyms and initialisms, perhaps most famously the US Government and the so-called alphabet agencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. The correct meaning of an acronym is frequently domain-specific knowledge, and many acronyms have different meanings in different domains. This has led some to use them to obfuscate meaning from those without such domain-specific knowledge.

Written usage

Abbreviations have been traditionally written using a full stop/period to mark the part that was deleted. In the case of most acronyms and initialisms, each letter is its own abbreviation, and in theory should get its own full stop/period. This usage is becoming less common as the presence of all capital letters is sufficient to indicate the word is an abbreviation; nevertheless some influential American style guides still insist on the many-periods treatment, such as the one used by The New York Times (which recommends periods after unpronounceable abbreviations such as "K.G.B." but not for pronounceable ones (acronyms), such as "NATO" [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/opinion/07KRIS.html?ex=1391490000&en=f887afd296d59e2f&ei=5007&partner=GOOGLE]), but other style guides, such as that of the BBC, no longer require this. Larry Trask, American author of the Penguin Guide to Punctuation, states categorically that, in British English, "this tiresome and unnecessary practice is now obsolete"[http://www.informatics.susx.ac.uk/doc/punctuation/node28.html]. Some acronyms undergo assimilation into ordinary words, when technical terms become commonplace with non-technical people: often they are then written in lower case, and eventually it is widely forgotten that the word was derived from the initials of others: scuba (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) and laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), for instance. The term anacronym has been coined as a portmanteau of the words anachronism and acronym to describe acronyms whose original meaning is not known to most speakers. While typically abbreviations exclude the initials of short function words (such as "and", "or", "of", or "to"), they are sometimes included in acronyms to make them pronounceable. Numbers (both cardinal and ordinal) in names are often represented by digits rather than initial letters; e.g. 4GL (Fourth generation language) or G77 (Group of 77). The traditional style of pluralizing single letters with "'s" ("there are two Q's in that word") was naturally extended to acronyms when they were commonly written with periods, and is still preferred by some people for initialisms. It is, however, very common to inflect them like ordinary words; thus the usual plural of "CD" is "CDs," with "CD's" being reserved for the possessive. When an acronym is part of a computer function that is conventionally written in lowercase letters, it is common to use an apostrophe to pluralize or otherwise conjugate the token (in computer lingo, it is not uncommon to use the name of a computer program, format, or function, acronym or no, as a verb, e.g., "John zipped the files" or "John zip'ed the files" means that John used the program zip on the files to conglomerate them), resulting in sentences like "be sure to remove any extraneous dll's after the program finishes uninstalling." In some languages, the convention of doubling the letters in the initialism is used to indicate plural words, for example the Spanish acronym EE.UU. for Estados Unidos ("United States"). This convention is followed for a limited number of English abbreviations, such as pp. for "pages". In some cases, an acronym or initialism has been turned into a name. The letters making up the name of the SAT college entrance test, for example, no longer officially stand for anything. This trend has been common with many companies hoping to retain their brand recognition while simultaneously moving away from what they saw as an outdated image: American Telephone and Telegraph is now simply AT&T, the company formerly named Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to "KFC". British Petroleum changed its name to "BP" to emphasize that it was no longer only an oil company (captured by the motto "beyond petroleum"); and Silicon Graphics, Incorporated changed its name to "SGI" to emphasize that it was no longer only a computer graphics company. DVD, curiously enough, has become bereft of official meaning, as some of its advocates decided the original "Digital Video Disc" moniker was too limiting and wanted to change it to "Digital Versatile Disc" yet were unable to bring all members on board. The initialism now has "no official meaning." Initialisms may have advantages in international markets; for example, some national affiliates of International Business Machines are legally incorporated as "IBM" (or, for example, "IBM Canada") to avoid translating the full name into local languages. This rebranding can lead to RAS syndrome, as when Trustee Savings Bank became "TSB Bank." A few high tech companies have taken the redundant acronym to the extreme such as ISM Information Systems Management Corp. and SHL Systemhouse Ltd.. Another very common example is RAM memory. This is redundant since RAM already stands for Random Access Memory. Sometimes, the initials are kept but the meaning is changed. SADD, for instance, originally Students Against Driving Drunk, changed the full form of its name to Students Against Destructive Decisions. YM originally stood for Young Miss, and later Young & Modern, but now stands for simply Your Magazine. When initialisms are defined in print, especially in the case of industry-specific jargon, the words forming the abbreviation are often capitalized for clarity. While this would be perfectly acceptable for proper nouns like Kentucky Fried Chicken, some usage writers have argued that it is technically incorrect for other terms like storage area network. Correct or not, such usage is widespread in English publications.

Nomenclature

Initialism originally referred to abbreviations formed from initials, without reference to pronunciation, but during the middle portion of the twentieth century, when acronyms and initialisms saw more use than ever before, the word acronym was coined for abbreviations which are pronounced as a word, like "NATO" or "AIDS". The term initialism is now typically taken to refer to abbreviations which are pronounced by sounding out the name of each constituent letter (e.g. HTML). In general usage, the term acronym is commonly used to describe all abbreviations made from initial letters, regardless of pronunciation. Many writers and speakers do not observe any difference between acronyms and initialisms. There is no agreement as to what to call abbreviations that contain single letters, but can otherwise be pronounced as a word, such as JPEG (Jay-Peg). These abbreviations are sometimes referred to as acronym-initialism hybrids, although they are grouped by most under the broad meaning of acronym.

Examples

- pronounced as a word, containing only initial letters:
- NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
- FIFA: Fédération Internationale de Football Association
- laser: light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
- scuba: self-contained underwater breathing apparatus
- RAM: random access memory
- pronounced as a word, containing non-initial letters:
- Interpol: International Criminal Police Organization
- Gestapo: Geheime Staatspolizei ("secret state police")
- radar: radio detection and ranging
- CONMEBOL: Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (South American Football Confederation)
- pronounced as a word or names of letters, depending on speaker or context:
- FAQ: (fack or ef-ay-kyu) Frequently asked questions
- SQL: (sequel or es-kyu-el) Structured Query Language
- VAT: (vat or vee-ay-tee): Value added tax
- IRA: (ira or eye-are-ay): When used for Irish Republican Army, always pronounced as letters; when used for Individual Retirement Account, can be pronounced as letters or as a word.
- pronounced as a combination of names of letters and a word:
- OPEC: (OH-pec) Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
- JPEG: (JAY-peg) Joint Photographic Experts Group
- IUPAC: (AYE-YOU-pac) International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
- UEFA: (You-EE-fa or You-AY-fa) Union of European Football Associations
- CPU: (cee-pee-you) central processment unit
- pronounced only as the names of letters
- BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation
- DNA: DeoxyriboNucleic Acid
- DNS: Domain Name System
- ICBM: Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
- pronounced as the names of letters that also sound like words
- YRUU: (WHY-are-YOU-YOU?) Young Religious Unitarian Universalists
- pronounced as the names of letters but with a shortcut
- AAA: (triple-AY) American Automobile Association
- IEEE: (AYE-triple-EE) Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
- NAACP: (EN-double-AY-SEE-PEA) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
- NCAA: (EN-SEE-double-AY) National Collegiate Athletic Association
- shortcut incorporated into name
- 3M: originally Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company
- W3C: World Wide Web Consortium
- E³: Electronic Entertainment Exposition
- recursive acronyms, where the acronym itself is the expansion of one initial
- VISA: VISA International Service Association
- GNU: GNU's Not Unix
- WINE: Wine Is Not an Emulator
- GOD GOD Over Djinn, from Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach

Trivia

The longest acronym, according to the 1965 edition of Acronyms, Initialisms and Abbreviations Dictionary, is ADCOMSUBORDCOMPHIBSPAC, a United States Navy term that stands for "Administrative Command, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet Subordinate Command." The world's longest initialism, according to the Guinness Book of World Records is NIIOMTPLABOPARMBETZHELBETRABSBOMONIMONKONOTDTEKHSTROMONT. The 56-letter initialism (54 in Cyrillic) is from the Concise Dictionary of Soviet Terminology and means "The laboratory for shuttering, reinforcement, concrete and ferroconcrete operations for composite-monolithic and monolithic constructions of the Department of the Technology of Building-assembly operations of the Scientific Research Institute of the Organization for building mechanization and technical aid of the Academy of Building and Architecture of the USSR." Sometimes an acronym's official meaning is crafted to fit an acronym that actually means something that sounds less "official." For instance, the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) weapon recently developed in the United States is popularly called the "mother of all bombs" since it is the largest conventional bomb in the world; it is widely assumed that the "mother of all wars" phrase was the true inspiration for the MOAB acronym. During the 1960s trend for action-adventure spy thrillers, it was a common practice for fictional spy organizations or their nemeses to employ names that were acronyms (or more accurately, backronyms). Sometimes these acronyms made sense but most of the time, they were words incongruously crammed together for the mere purpose of obtaining a catchy acronym, traditionally a heroic sounding one for the good guys and an appropriately menacing one for the bad guys. This has become one of the most commonly parodied clichés of the spy thriller genre. Some of the most popular were:
- C.O.N.T.R.O.L. and K.A.O.S. from the Get Smart series.
- F.I.R.M. from the 1980s TV series Airwolf
- M.A.S.K.: The Mobile Armored Strike Kommand, the mask-wearing cohort from 1980s saturday morning cartoon M.A.S.K.
- V.E.N.O.M. : The Vicious, Evil Network Of Mayhem, the evil mask-wearing cohort from 1980s saturday morning cartoon M.A.S.K.
- H.A.R.M. from the No One Lives Forever (NOLF) series of computer games, which were released in the 1990s, but were based in 1960s pop culture. What H.A.R.M actually stands for is never revealed, and speculation about its true meaning is the subject of several jokes in both games. (However, in the 1966 spy film Agent for H.A.R.M., it stands for Human Aetiological Relations Machine.)
- S.H.I.E.L.D. from the Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Marvel comics.
- S.P.E.C.T.R.E. from the James Bond series.
- U.N.C.L.E. and T.H.R.U.S.H from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (The meaning of T.H.R.U.S.H. was never revealed on the series, but in the novelizations, T.H.R.U.S.H. was stated to be "Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity.)
- P.A.G.A.N. (People Against Goodness and Normalcy) from the film Dragnet.

External links

- [http://www.initialisms.com initialisms.com]— Acronyms, Abbreviations & Initialisms Directory
- [http://www.noslang.com Online Acronym Dictionary & Translator]— Lookup or translate slang and acronyms
- [http://www.acronymfinder.com Acronym Finder]— searchable database of acronyms and abbreviations (over 400,000 entries)
- [http://www.acronymsearch.com Acronym Search]—searchable acronyms and abbreviation database (over 50,000 entries)
- [http://lethargy.swmed.edu/argh/ARGH.asp Biomedical Acronym Database]
- [http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLPages/AsianPages/Acronyms.html Acronyms Used by Asian Studies' Scholars: a Dictionary]
- [http://www.siglas.com.br English and Portuguese acronyms searchable database (over 200,000 entries)] Category:Abbreviations Category:Types of words ko:두문자어 ja:頭字語 simple:Acronym

Mass media

Mass media is a term used to denote, as a class, that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience (typically at least as large as the whole population of a nation state). It was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks and of mass-circulation newspapers and magazines. The mass-media audience has been viewed by some commentators as forming a mass society with special characteristics, notably atomization or lack of social connections, which render it especially susceptible to the influence of modern mass-media techniques such as advertising and propaganda. It is also gaining popularity in the blogosphere when referring to the mainstream media. :Usage note: The term mass media is mainly used by academics and media-professionals. When members of the general public refer to "the media" they are usually referring to the mass media, or to the news media, which is a section of the mass media.

Etymology and usage

Media (the plural of medium) is a truncation of the term media of communication, referring to those organized means of dissemination of fact, opinion, entertainment, and other information, such as newspapers, magazines, cinema films, radio, television, the World Wide Web, billboards, books, Compact discs, DVDs, videocassettes, and other forms of publishing. Although writers currently change in their preference for using media in the singular ("the media is...") or the plural ("the media are..."), the former will still incur criticism in some situations. (Please see data for a similar example.) Academic programs for the study of mass media are usually referred to as mass communication programs.

History

During the 20th century, the advent of mass media was driven by technology that allowed the massive duplication of material at a low price. Physical duplication technologies such as printing, record pressing and film duplication allowed the duplication of books, newspapers and movies at low prices to huge audiences. Television and radio allowed the electronic duplication of content for the first time. Mass media had the economics of linear replication: a single work could make money proportional to the number of copies sold, and as volumes went up, units costs went down, increasing profit margins further. Vast fortunes were to be made in mass media. In a democratic society, an independent media serves to educate the public/electorate about issues regarding government and corporate entities (see Mass media and public opinion). Some consider concentration of media ownership to be the single greatest threat to democracy.

Corporate and mainstream outlets

Sometimes mass media (and the news media in particular) is referred to as the "corporate media". Other references include the "mainstream media" (MSM). Technically, "mainstream media" includes outlets that are in harmony with the prevailing direction of influence in the culture at large. In the United States, usage of these terms often depends on the connotations the speaker wants to invoke. The term "corporate media" is often used by leftist media critics to imply that the mainstream media is manipulated by large multinational corporations. This is countered by right-leaning authors with the term "MSM", the acronym implying that the majority of mass media sources is dominated by leftist powers which are furthering their own agenda (see Conspiracy theory, Media bias in the United States).

Purposes

- Advocacy, both for business and social concerns. This can include advertising, marketing, propaganda, public relations, and political communication.
- Enrichment and education, such as literature.
- Entertainment, traditionally through performances of acting, music, and sports, along with light reading; since the late 20th century also through video and computer games.
- Journalism.
- Public service announcements.

Forms

Electronic media and print media include:
- Broadcasting, in the narrow sense, for radio and television.
- Various types of discs or tape. In the 20th century, these were mainly used for music. Video and computer uses followed.
- Film, most often used for entertainment, but also for documentaries.
- Internet, which has many uses and presents both opportunities and challenges. Blogs are unique to the Internet.
- Publishing, in the narrow sense, meaning on paper, mainly via books, magazines, and newspapers. Toward the end of the 20th century, the advent of the World Wide Web marked the first era in which any individual could have a means of exposure on a scale comparable to that of mass media. For the first time, anyone with a web site can address a global audience, although serving to high levels of web traffic is still relatively expensive. It is possible that the rise of peer-to-peer technologies may have begun the process of making the cost of bandwidth manageable. Although a vast amount of information, imagery, and commentary (i.e. "content") has been made available, it is often difficult to determine the authenticity and reliability of information contained in (in many cases, self-published) web pages. The invention of the Internet has also allowed breaking news stories to reach around the globe within minutes. This rapid growth of instantaneous, decentralized communication is often deemed likely to change mass media and its relationship to society. "Cross-media" means the idea of distributing the same message through different media channels. A similar idea is expressed in the news industry as "convergence". Many authors understand cross-media publishing to be the ability to publish in both print and on the web without manual conversion effort. An increasing number of wireless devices with mutually incompatible data and screen formats make it even more difficult to achieve the objective “create

Contrast with non-mass media

Non-mass or "personal" media (point-to-point and person-to-person communication) include:
- Speech
- Gestures
- Telephony
- Postal mail
- Some uses of the Internet
- Some Interactive media

External links

- ((fr.en.nl)) [http://www.cybartv.org/ news concepts and applications of communications with the interactives multimedia and networktechnologie]
- [http://independentmedia.ca MANA - the Media Alliance for New Activism]
- [http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/Archives/Media%20Files.htm Philosophical Society.com's list of scholarly articles on media.]
- [http://www.LanguageMonitor.com LanguageMonitor] - Media Metrics and Analysis ja:マスメディア simple:Medium

Word of mouth

:For the Jaco Pastorius album, see Word of Mouth. Word of mouth is the passing of information by verbal means, especially recommendations, but also general information, in an informal, person-to-person manner, rather than by mass media, advertising, organized publication, or traditional marketing. Word of mouth is typically considered a spoken communication, although web dialogue, such as blogs, message boards and emails are often now included in the definition. Word of mouth promotion is highly valued by marketers. It is felt that this form of communication has valuable source credibility. People are more inclined to believe word of mouth promotion than more formal forms of promotion because the communicator is unlikely to have an ulterior motive (ie.: they are not out to sell you something) (for evidence as to the conditions under which word-of-mouth communication is effective, see Grewal et al. 2003). Also people tend to believe people that they know. In order to manufacture word of mouth communications, marketers use publicity techniques. See Word of mouth marketing. There is some overlap in meaning between word of mouth and the following: rumour, gossip, innuendo, and hearsay; however the negative connotations of these words are not included in the meaning of word of mouth.

References

- Renée Dye, 'The Buzz on Buzz,' Harvard Business Review, November-December, 2000.
- Rajdeep Grewal, Thomas W. Cline, and Antony Davies, 'Early-Entrant Advantage, Word-of-Mouth Communication, Brand Similarity, and the Consumer Decision-Making Process,' Journal of Consumer Psychology, October, 2003.
- Frederick F. Reichheld, 'The One Number You Need to Grow,' Harvard Business Review, December, 2003.
- Yubo Chen and Jinhong Xie, 'Online Consumer Review: A New Element of Marketing Communications Mix,' http://ssrn.com/abstract=618782, July, 2004.
- Florian v Wangenheim and Tomás Bayón, 'The effect of word of mouth on services switching: Measurement and moderating variables,' European Journal of Marketing, September, 2004.
- Paul Marsden, Alain Samson, and Neville Upton, 'Advocacy Drives Growth,' Brand Strategy, December, 2005.

External links

-
- [http://www.som.yale.edu/faculty/dm324/papers.asp Yale School of Management Papers] category:Consumer behaviour

Wiktionary

Wiktionary is a sister project to Wikipedia intended to be a free wiki dictionary (including thesaurus and lexicon) in every language. It was set up on December 12, 2002 following a proposal by Daniel Alston. On March 29, 2004 the first non-English wiktionaries were initiated in [http://fr.wiktionary.org/ French] and [http://pl.wiktionary.org/ Polish]. Wiktionaries in numerous other languages have since been started. Wiktionary was hosted on a temporary URL until May 1, 2004 when it switched to the current [http://www.wiktionary.org/ full URL]. As of 2005, the English Wiktionary has more than 100,000 entries. Wiktionary serves to:
- explain the meanings of words, terms and abbreviations
- act as a thesaurus by showing synonyms
- translate words from one language to another. Unlike many dictionaries, which are monolingual or bilingual, Wiktionary is a multilingual and international dictionary, meaning that the goal is to cover every word from all known languages and to do so in multiple languages. For example, the English Wiktionary is written in English and has articles for words from all languages. The French Wiktionary can also have articles for all those same words, but the articles are written in French. One difference between Wiktionary and Wikipedia is that most entries begin with a lowercase letter, and pages beginning with upper- and lowercase letters refer to different things. For example, the entries on lowercase i and uppercase I are distinct. All of the existing entries in the English Wiktionary were converted to lowercase automatically in mid-2005, and manual intervention is being used to move pages that need to be uppercase.

References

External links

- [http://www.wiktionary.org/ Wiktionary]
- [http://en.wiktionary.org/ In English]
- [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary Wikimedia's page on Wiktionary] Category:Online dictionaries and encyclopedias Category:Websites Dictionary, Wiki als:Wiktionary ko:Wiktionary ms:Wiktionary ja:ウィクショナリー simple:Wiktionary th:วิกิพจนานุกรม zh-min-nan:Wiktionary

Linguist

The following is a list of linguists, those who study linguistics. See modern linguists for those whose work follows the program of structural linguists. __NOTOC__

A

- William Foxwell Albright
- Mark Aronoff
- John Langshaw Austin (1911-1960) British

B

- Emmon Bach (1929-) American
- Zami Bahawalpuri
- Mark Baker
- Charles Bally (1865-1947) French
- Yehoshua Bar-Hillel (1915-1975) Israeli
- Jan Niecislaw Baudouin de Courtenay (1845-1929) Polish
- Alton Becker
- Mary Beckman
- Adriana Belletti
- Byron Bender
- Benjamin K.Bergen
- Roger Berry British
- Derek Bickerton (1926-)
- Manfred Bierwisch German
- Wilhelm Bleek (1827-1875) German
- Bernard Bloch
- Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) American
- Sheila Blumstein
- Robert Blust
- Franz Boas (1858-1942) American
- Jonathan Bobaljik
- Paul Boersma
- Dwight Bolinger (1907-1992) American
- Franz Bopp (1791-1867) German
- Željko Bošković
- John Bowring (1792-1872) British
- Wilhelm Braune (1850-1926) German
- Michael Brody (1954-) Hungarian/British
- Karl Brugmann (1849-1919) German
- Ranko Bugarski Serbian sociolinguist
- Karl Bühler (1879-1963) German
- Alisson Burkett

C

- Lyle Campbell
- Monica Cantero
- Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) German
- Robyn Carston
- John Chadwick (1902-1998) British (Linear B)
- Wallace Chafe
- Paul Chilton
- Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832) French (Egyptian hieroglyphs)
- Noam Chomsky (1928-) American
- Guglie