2

I wrote this sentence:

This helping hand should come from the government as companies might ask the talentful students to appear on their advertisements in return, which is unethical.

Grammarly Premium warned me that talentful is actually not a word.

Ngram says that since 1840s it is not common but peaked in 1845.

There is no result for this word in Cambridge Dictionary online.

Is it incorrect English now? Especially for academic English? If so, why?

Improve this question
2
  • Good research to start, learnerdude. You might begin to answer your own question (it is an option). Please do stick around to tour the site and see the help center.
    – livresque
    Commented Jan 24, 2023 at 2:32
  • Just a guess ... 'talented' is easier to say. // Acceptability is eventually governed by idiomaticity (how people actually use the language) and is not totally fixed over time.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jan 24, 2023 at 17:33

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Even in the 1820's, as Ngram Viewer shows, "talented" was by far the more popular word. "Talented" appears in Webster's 1828 dictionary but "talentful" does not. It appears that the word was never particularly popular; Wiktionary describes it as archaic so it would not be considered correct now.

Improve this answer
3
  • 1
    Yes, but why did it fall out of usage
    – Gio
    Commented Jan 24, 2023 at 7:56
  • We weren't alive in the mid-19th century, so we don't know!
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Jan 24, 2023 at 9:12
  • It fell out of use because "talented" was more popular, and there was no good reason to choose "talentful" over it.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Jan 24, 2023 at 10:31

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .