59
votes
Accepted
Is English really a non-tonal language?
Sorry is still the word sorry no matter your intonation, though it may have different meanings in context. In a tonal language, say Mandarin Chinese, it would be an entirely different written form ...
- 10.4k
52
votes
Accepted
Etymology of "fairy"
According to Wiktionary, Galician, Catalan and Occitan have a word fada "fairy" and Italian has fata with the same meaning, which seems like a clear confirmation of a Vulgar Latin form *fata meaning "...
- 83.7k
52
votes
Is English really a non-tonal language?
You seem to be confusing intonation with tonality. English definitely has intonation (pretty much all natural languages do), but it is not a tonal language.
Tonal languages use tonality for either ...
39
votes
A word for "using two words next to each other that mean the same thing"?
The word you want is pleonasm:
Pleonasm (/ˈpliːənæzəm/; from Greek πλεονασμός (pleonasmós), from πλέον (pleon), meaning "more, too much") is the use of more words or parts of words than are ...
- 21.1k
27
votes
Doesn't English have vowel harmony?
English doesn't have vowel harmony.
"Vowel harmony" refers to situations where there is some process that changes vowels to be in the same class as other vowels in the word, and/or there is a ...
- 83.7k
26
votes
Accepted
Word for heavily foreign-influenced speech?
For the language phenomenon where the English language is heavily influenced by another language, a portmanteau term combined from the name of two languages is used. In your specific example, it is ...
- 64.2k
24
votes
Removal of a repeated syllable for ease of pronunciation
Wikipedia says:
Haplology (from Greek ἁπλόος haplóos "simple" and λόγος lógos, "speech") is defined as the elimination of a syllable when two identical or similar syllables occur ...
- 59k
22
votes
A word for "using two words next to each other that mean the same thing"?
Tautology - Unnecessary repetition, usually in close proximity, of the same word, phrase, idea, argument, etc. The saying of the same thing twice in different words generally considered to be a fault ...
- 18.1k
18
votes
What type of concept is "mad scientist"?
From a story telling perspective (and you are talking about fictional characters), this is a "trope".
Originally a trope was a unique or novel use of a word, to contrast it's meaning with a ...
- 507
18
votes
Why is "a black belt in Judo" a metonym?
The definition "substitution by an attribute" may not be the most precise definition there is; the SOED has the following definition.
(SOED) metonymy 1 The substitution of a word denoting ...
- 23.3k
15
votes
Accepted
Do laypersons understand medical terms?
Translation is a difficult task. Cultures are different, situations are different, histories are different.
English is interesting because it has a mixed heritage for many medical terms. For many ...
- 71.9k
14
votes
Has the conception of prepositions broadened?
This broadened conception of a preposition has a long history, but its recent popularity is thanks to its appearance in Huddleston & Pullum's The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002). ...
- 19.2k
13
votes
Accepted
What is the English term for "unwittingly misspelling words based on their pronunciation?"
Consider phonetic spelling.
Phonetic spelling constitutes an alteration of ordinary spelling that better represents the spoken language, that employs only characters of the regular alphabet, and ...
- 38.9k
13
votes
What type of concept is "mad scientist"?
What type of concept is "mad scientist"?
It is a stereotype
OED
3.b. A preconceived and oversimplified idea of the characteristics which typify a person, situation, etc.; an attitude based ...
- 45.1k
11
votes
What is it called when one person calls another something they metaphorically resemble?
Your first three examples are of terms of endearment.
The fourth is simply a description, rather than a name, although "Solid" alone could be used as a nickname, based on physical characteristics.
...
- 2,497
9
votes
What's the current scholarly opinion on the "minims" explanation for the spelling of "love", "tongue," etc?
One of the most valuable resources I've found is Bullokar. He wrote a lot about English grammar (1586), and even invented an orthography. Additionally, he had experience with both hand-written and ...
- 67.1k
9
votes
Accepted
Inserting meaningless phrase in sentences
It is an example of a filler phrase, in this case a parenthetical filler phrase since it is located in the middle of a sentence. Perhaps the most infamous filler in BrE is innit (isn't it?):
"I'm ...
- 9,428
9
votes
Accepted
Is there a word for when a word changes from a noun to a verb?
Anthimeria: Using one part of speech as another part of speech, such as using a noun as if it were a verb:
From Wikipedia
In rhetoric, anthimeria, traditionally and more properly called
...
- 8,513
9
votes
What is the English term for "unwittingly misspelling words based on their pronunciation?"
I'm not sure if it will work perfectly, but you might be able to use phoneticise.
phoneticize verb
to represent speech in writing using a system in which individual symbols reflect speech ...
- 6,475
9
votes
Accepted
What is it called when one person calls another something they metaphorically resemble?
When a person is given a name corresponding to an attribute of that person, or a thing is named by something closely associated with it, it's called "metonymy." Only the last of your examples seems to ...
- 126
9
votes
Accepted
What is the word for the fusing of, for example, "-ed" and the final consonant "d" to give the ending (with voice removed) of "bent"?
Short answer (tl;dr):
According to the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston & Pullum 2002; pp. 1601—1602) the two processes involved are simply:
devoicing of the suffix (d→t)
...
- 47.9k
9
votes
What type of concept is "mad scientist"?
The general term for a phrase that's understood by a community, even though the meaning is not the literal meaning of the words, is idiom. From M-W
an expression in the usage of a language that is ...
- 22k
8
votes
I am [who/whom] G-d made me
If I could choose neither, I would, since I'm not sure if the sentence is grammatical (I have asked a separate question about that here: Is "I am who(m) God made me" grammatical?).
If I had ...
- 83.7k
8
votes
Accepted
Any English terms for ‘to change the part of speech (of a word) without applying modification’?
The word is 'conversion'. The word was part of the required metalanguage for an English language class I undertook.
The OED gives the definition relevant to the usage as:
Grammar. The use of one ...
- 1,062
8
votes
Do laypersons understand medical terms?
People with some knowledge of classical languages such as Greek and Latin can usually work out what those terms mean. For example 'rhin' refers to the the nose and 'tachy' means speedy.
Biologists ...
- 37.4k
8
votes
Origin of stating indirect object by sentence structure and no pronoun
The relation between
She gave the car to Bill.
and
She gave Bill the car.
is a well-known phenomenon called The Dative Alternation.
Both sentences are grammatical, and they mean the same thing.
...
- 108k
8
votes
Why is "a black belt in Judo" a metonym?
I ran into an answer that stated that black belt in the sentence, She's a black belt in Judo is an example of metonymy.
If it is, it is a poor and debatable metonym.
"A black belt" is a ...
- 45.1k
7
votes
Accepted
Why is the L silent in "walk" but not in "bulk"?
Based on the pairs chalk, bald and chalk, milk, the identity of both the consonant following the L and the vowel preceding the L could affect whether the L was lost. I'm not certain why, but my guess ...
- 83.7k
7
votes
Why does the word "experience" have a different initial vowel from that in "expert" and "expertise"?
This is a case of vowel reduction (see Wikipedia). In "expert," the initial syllable has primary stress. In "expertise," it has secondary stress. But in "experience," it ...
- 19.2k
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