jigger
back alley
judy
girl-friend
kecks
trousers
la
lad (used to
address someone)
moggy
cat
ollies
marbles
sarneys
sandwiches
scuffer
policeman
spec
view (as in I’ve
got a good spec)
wack
mister (used to
address someone)
yocker
spit
youse
you (plural)
Some marginal cases
Estimating the vocabulary size of English is further complicated by the existence of thousands of uncertain cases – words which you wouldn’t feel were part of the ‘central’ vocabulary of the language. On the other hand, you might well feel unhappy about leaving them out.
What would you do with all the abbreviations that exist, for example? A recent dictionary of abbreviated words lists over 400,000 entries. It includes old and familiar forms such as flu, hi-fi, deb, FBI, UFO, NATO and BA. There are large numbers of new technical terms, such as VHS (the video system), AIDS, and all the terms from computerspeak (PC, RAM, ROM, BASIC, bit) and space travel (SRB – solid rocket boosters, OMS – orbital manoeuvring system, etc.). And there are thousands of coinages which have restricted regional currency, such as RAC (Royal Automobile Club), AAA (Automobile Association of America), or which reflect local organizations and attitudes – with varying levels of seriousness – such as MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and DAMM (Drinkers Against Mad Mothers).
Because these forms are dependent on ‘bigger’ words for their existence, you might well decide not to include them in your count. On the other hand, you could argue that they are often more important than the original words, and that the original words may not even be remembered or known (as many people find with such forms as AIDS). Personally, I would include them in my word count, but some dictionaries do not.
There are other marginal cases. What would you do with the names of people, places and things in the world? Should London, Whitehall, Paris, Munich, and Spain be included in your word count? You might think they should, especially knowing that many of these words are different in other languages (München and España, for example). However, it isn’t usual to include them as part of the vocabulary of English, because the vast majority can appear in any language. Whichever language you speak, if you walk down Pall Mall, you can refer to where you are by using the words Pall Mall in your own language. The old music hall repartee relied on this point:
A: I say, I say, I say. I can speak French.
B: You can speak French? I didn’t know that. Let me hear you speak French.
A: Paris, Marseilles, Nice, Calais, Jean-Paul Sartre…
The same applies to the names of people, animals, objects (such as trains and boats), and so on. Proper names aren’t part of any one language: they are universal. However, it’s important to note the usages where these words do take on special meanings, as in Has Whitehall said anything about this? Here, Whitehall means ‘the Government’; it isn’t just a place name. Dictionaries would usually include this kind of usage in their list. But it’s not at all clear how many uses of this kind there are.
Fauna and flora present a further type of difficulty. Around a million species of insects have already been described, for example, which means that there must be around a million designations available to enable English-speaking specialists to talk about their subject. How much of this can be included in our word count? The largest dictionaries already include hundreds of thousands of technical and scientific terms, but none of them includes more than a fraction of the insect names – usually just the most important species. Add this total to that required for birds, fish, and other animals, and the theoretical size of the English vocabulary increases enormously.
Types of vocabulary
It may not be possible to arrive at a satisfactory total for English vocabulary. The core vocabulary, as reflected in such dictionaries as the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary or Webster’s Third New International (which differ significantly in their coverage) is well over half a million; but if we include some of the above categories, this total will increase by a factor of three or four. How is it all done? How does the language manage to construct so many words? How are new words formed?
There are really only a few ways of creating new words. Quite a large number are simply taken over from other languages; they are called ‘borrowings’, or ‘loan-words’ (slightly misleading expressions, when we consider that the language does not give them back!). A list of foreign words in English is given on p. 40 (it omits many details about the exact route these words took as they came into English – tomato, for example, did not come directly from the Central American language Nahuatl, but via Spanish). It’s clear that an extraordinary range of languages is involved – over 350 – with some (such as French, Latin, and Greek) being repeatedly used over the centuries. The reasons for this state of affairs are discussed in Part III.
Some sources of Modern English words
Afrikaans: trek, apartheid
American Indian languages: moccasin, wigwam, squaw
Anglo-Saxon: God, house, rain, sea, beer, sheep, gospel, rainbow, Sunday, crafty, wisdom, understand
Arabic: sultan, sheikh, hashish, harem, ghoul, algebra
Australian languages: dingo, boomerang, budgerigar, wombat
Chinese: ketchup, sampan, chow mein, kaolin, typhoon, yen (= desire)
Czech: robot
Dutch: frolic, cruise, slim
Eskimo: kayak, igloo, anorak
Finnish: sauna
French: aunt, debt, fruit, table, challenge, venison, medicine, justice, victory, sacrifice, prince, dinner, grotesque, garage, moustache, unique, brochure, police, montage, voyeur, castle
Gaelic: brogue, leprechaun, banshee, galore
German: waltz, hamster, zinc, plunder, poodle, paraffin, yodel, angst, strafe, snorkel
Greek: crisis, topic, stigma, coma, dogma, neurosis, pylon, therm, euphoria, schizophrenia
Hawaiian: ukulele, hula
Hebrew: shibboleth, kosher, kibbutz
Hindi: guru, pundit, sari, thug
Hungarian: goulash, paprika
Italian: sonnet, traffic, bandit, opera, balcony, soprano, lava, arcade, studio, scampi, timpani, ballot
Japanese: kimono, tycoon, judo
Latin: diocese, index, orbit, equator, compact, discuss, genius, circus, aquarium, alibi, ultimatum, focus
Malagasy: raffia
Malay: sarong, amok, gong
Nahuatl: tomato
Norwegian: ski, fjord, cosy
Old Norse: both, egg, knife, low, sky, take, they, want
Persian: sofa, shah, caravan, divan, bazaar, shawl
Portuguese: flamingo, buffalo, pagoda, veranda, marmalade
Quechuan: llama
Russian: czar, steppe, sputnik, intelligentsia, rouble
Sanskrit: yoga, swastika
Spanish: sherry, cannibal, banana, potato, cigar, rodeo, stampede, canyon, cafeteria, supremo, marijuana, junta
Swahili: safari, bwana
Swedish: ombudsman
Tahitian: tattoo
Tamil: catamaran
Tibetan: sherpa, yeti, yak
Tongan: taboo
Turkish: yoghurt, kiosk, fez, caftan, bosh, caviare
Welsh: crag coracle, corgi
Yiddish: schemozzle, schmaltz
An even more important way of creating new words is to add prefixes and suffixes to old ones. There are over 100 common prefixes and suffixes in English, and they can be used singly or in various combinations. The prefixes include anti- (antifreeze), co- (co-pilot), de- (defraud), ex-(ex-husband), non- (non-smoker), super- (supermarket), ultra- (ultramodern), and un- (undecided). Among the suffixes are
-able (drinkable), -ation (starvation), -eer (profiteer), -ful (glassful), -ish (childish), -let (booklet), -ness (goodness) and -ly (friendly). Adding strings of prefixes and suffixes can produce such monster words as indestructibility and antidisestablishmentarianism.
A simple way of making new words is just to change the way they are used in a sentence, without adding any prefixes or suffixes. This process is known as conversion. Verbs can be converted from nouns, as when we say we’re going to tape a programme or butter some bread. Nouns can be made from adjectives, as in He’s a natural or They’re regulars. Adjectives can be made from nouns, as in a Liverpool accent. Verbs can be made from prepositions, as in to down tools. And there are several other types.
Another important technique is to join two words together to make a different word, a compound, as in blackbird, shopkeeper, stowaway, air-conditioning and frying-pan. Note that the meaning of a compound isn’t simply found by adding together the meaning of its parts: a blackbird isn’t the same as a black bird, for instance. Also note, as we’ve already seen, that compounds aren’t always written as single words. There are hundreds of thousands of compounds in English, especially in scientific fields.
There are several other ways in which new words can be formed, especially in the spoken language. We have already seen the importance of abbreviations – shortening a word (phone), using its initial letters (NATO), or blending two words (brunch, breathalyser). And there’s also the curious process whereby new words can be made by repeating an element, or changing it very slightly, as in goody-goody, ping-pong, criss-cross and mishmash.
New words for old
English vocabulary has a remarkable range, flexibility, and adaptability. Thanks to the periods of contact with foreign languages and its readiness to coin new words out of old elements, English seems to have far more words in its core vocabulary than other languages. For example, alongside kingly (from Anglo-Saxon) we find royal (from French) and regal (from Latin). There are many such sets of words, which add greatly to our opportunities to express subtle shades of meaning at various levels of style (see p. 194). English has always been a ‘vacuum-cleaner’ of a language – sucking in words from other languages at every opportunity. (Or – avoiding the anthropomorphic metaphor – the people who speak the language have always been ready to incorporate loan-words.) In this respect English contrasts with some other languages (such as French), where powerful lobbies of speakers have tried, usually unsuccessfully, to keep loan-words out.
Of course, not everyone likes the rate at which English vocabulary continues to expand. There is often an antagonistic reaction to new words. Computer jargon has its adherents, but it also has its critics. Old rural dialect words may be admired, but the new words from urban dialects are often reviled. The latest slang is occasionally thought of as vivid and exciting, but more often it is condemned as imprecise and sloppy. The news that fresh varieties of English are developing around the world, bringing in large numbers of new words, is seen by some as a good thing, adding still further to the expressive potential of the language; but many people shake their heads, and mutter about the language going downhill. We shall address this question in Chapter 15.
People take vocabulary very personally, and will readily admit to having ‘pet hates’ about the way other people use words. Vocabulary – and especially change in vocabulary – is one of the most controversial issues in the field of language study. Some people are simply against language change on principle. Others, more sensibly, become worried only when they perceive a usage to be developing which seems to remove a useful distinction in meaning, or to add an ambiguity. They draw public attention to the way words of closely related appearance tend to be confused in popular use, such as disinterested and uninterested, imply and infer, or militate and mitigate. The need for precision is paramount in their minds.
It’s difficult to say whether this kind of criticism can halt a change in meaning or use. The history of the language shows how thousands of words have altered their meaning over time, or added new meanings. The vocabulary now is not what it was in Shakespeare’s day, and Shakespeare’s vocabulary wasn’t the same as Chaucer’s. In Anglo-Saxon, meat meant ‘food’; today, it means a certain type of food (apart from in such words as mincemeat). Notorious once meant ‘widely known’; today it means ‘widely and unfavourably known’. Similarly, pretty once meant ‘ingenious’ (‘a pretty plot’), a villain was a farm labourer, naughty meant ‘worth nothing’, and a publican was a public servant.
People do not object to these changes in meaning today, or even notice them, because the new uses have been with us for a very long time. Objections are only made to words that are currently in the process of change. For instance, many people complain that they can no longer use gay, now that the meaning of ‘homosexual’ has been added to the previous meaning of ‘joyful’. And they object to the over-use of words and phrases in place of more precise or economical alternatives, such as nice, literally (used as an intensifying word, as in there were literally millions), and at this moment in time. The worst judgement people can pass on an expression is to call it a cliché.
There is certainly a need to keep a careful eye on our use of words, and on the way other people use them. If what we say or write is unclear, ambiguous, or unintelligible, we do no service to ourselves or our listeners/readers. But critical monitoring of current usage is not the same as a blind opposition to all new words and meanings, such as objecting to all new verbs ending in -ize on principle (one of the commonest vocabulary complaints made by letter-writers to the BBC in recent years).
Do such objections do any good? It is difficult to know whether they can raise public consciousness sufficiently to influence the course of language change. The processes that govern change seem too complex and deeply rooted in society for the voices of a few individuals to have much effect. Certainly, the evidence seems to support the opposite view. For example, the objections which were being raised to new -ize verbs a few years ago have not stopped the acceptance of dozens of these verbs into the language.
A good way of illustrating this point is to look at the usage manuals which were around a generation ago, and compare them with those that are being published now. The first edition of Sir Ernest Gowers’ The
The etymological fallacy
When people object to the way a word has taken on a new meaning, they usually appeal to the word’s history (or etymology) for support. The older meaning, it is said, is the ‘correct’ meaning. For example, the word decimate is nowadays widely used to mean ‘destroy a lot of’. Those who know the Latin origins of the word, however, point out that originally the word meant ‘destroy one tenth of’ (decem being Latin for ‘ten’). They therefore object to the modern usage, which they call ‘loose’ or ‘careless’, and insist that decimate be used ‘properly’. (Ironically, this virtually bans the word from everyday use, for it is difficult indeed to imagine contexts where it proves necessary to destroy exactly one tenth of something – which is presumably why the word broadened its meaning in the first place!)
Reasoning of this kind is common. The ‘real’ meaning of history is ‘investigation’, because that is what the word meant in Greek. The ‘real’ meaning of nice is ‘fastidious’, because that is what it meant in Shakespeare’s time (a sense still found in such phrases as a nice distinction). Always, an older meaning is preferred to the modern one.
Such reasoning is tempting, but we must guard against it. If it is true that the older a meaning, the ‘truer’ it is, we cannot (to take this last example) stop with Shakespeare. The word nice can be traced back to Old French, where it meant ‘silly’, and then back to Latin, where nescius meant ‘ignorant’. We can even take the word further back in time, and guess at what it might have meant in the language from which Latin derived (Indo-European) – perhaps a meaning to do with ‘cut’. So what is the correct meaning of nice, if we insist on looking to history? Is it ‘fastidious’, ‘silly’, ‘ignorant’? Or must we
conclude that we do not know what nice means, because its original use in Indo-European is obscure or lost?
The absurdity of the argument should be plain. If we argue from etymology, we shall never know what a word ‘really’ means. What a word may have meant at one point in its history is not relevant for later periods. It is fascinating to trace the changes in meaning which have taken place, but this should not lead us to condemn new senses, and to keep old senses artificially alive. Etymology is never a true guide to meaning. To believe the opposite is to engage in the ‘etymological fallacy’.
Complete Plain Words appeared in 1954. It included warnings about the use of publicize, hospitalize, finalize, casualize (employ casual labour) and diarize (enter into a diary). The first three of these have since come to be accepted, despite all the warnings. (Why the last two did not also win acceptance isn’t at all clear.) In the third edition of Gowers’ book, published in 1986, the objections to publicize and the others are no longer cited. Instead, new -ize words are mentioned as currently attracting opposition, such as prioritize and routinize.
What does the future hold for these new words? Will they still be used in a generation’s time? No one can say. Linguists have excellent techniques for analysing vocabulary’s past, but they have not yet discovered a means of predicting its future.
How Large is Your Vocabulary?
At two years old the average vocabulary is about three hundred words. By the age of five it is about five thousand. By twelve it is about 12,000. And there for most people it rests – at the same size as the repertoire employed by a popular daily newspaper… Graduates have an average vocabulary of about 23,000 words.
The English Language: A Guided Tour of the Language Page 5