Word that has no definition

A nonsense word, unlike a sememe, may have no definition. Nonsense words can be classified depending on their orthographic and phonetic similarity with (meaningful) words.^[1] If it can be pronounced according to a language’s phonotactics, it is a pseudoword.^[2] Nonsense words are used in literature for poetic or humorous effect. Proper names of real or fictional entities are sometimes nonsense words.

Nonsense words are also used by researchers and educators as a tool to assess a learner’s phonetic decoding ability. The words follow phonetic rules but have no meaning.^[3]

A stunt word is a nonsense word used for a special effect, or to attract attention, as part of a performance. Such words are a feature of the work of Dr. Seuss («Sometimes I am quite certain there’s a Jertain in the curtain»).^[4]

The ability to infer the (hypothetical) meaning of a nonsense word from context is used to test for brain damage.^[5]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

 It turns out, many, many words in English don’t have a dictionary definition. Lexicographer Erin McKean and her team at Wordnik are on a mission to change that.

Did you know that 52% of the unique words of English aren’t in major dictionaries?

In 2010, Harvard researchers published findings in the journal Science that began to quantify the number of definition-less words in English. Using the Google Books Corpus (5 million books, 361 billion words) and comparing samples to major dictionaries (including the Oxford English Dictionary [OED] and the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary [MWD]), the researchers estimated that, in fact,the majority of the words used in English books are the equivalent of “lexical ‘dark matter,’ undocumented in standard references.”

Here’s why: Traditional dictionaries just can’t keep up with the size and scope of English. Mostly that’s because dictionary definitions are very difficult to write. A very talented editor may write seven entries in a day, or she may need weeks to describe just one word.

At Wordnik, we believe that every word should be lookupable. We’re currently on a hunt to find and add a million of these “missing words”. But instead of writing our own definitions (a process that doesn’t scale), we’re using text-mining and machine-learning techniques to find definitions that have already by written. We call these naturally-occurring definitions “free-range definitions”, or “FRDs” (pronounced “freds”).

Here are 20 of our favorite “missing words” and the free-range definitions we’ve found for them.

1. aeroir

“The concept of terroir will be familiar to most Edible Geography readers; recently, we also explored the idea of ‘merroir,’ or tasting place in sea salt. But what about aeroir — the atmospheric taste of place?”
Nicola Twilley, ediblegeography.com

2. agalmics

“Agalmics is an approach to (or more properly, perhaps, an alternative to) economics which acknowledges that non-scarce goods will always be copied, whether legally or illegally: ‘With our information technologies copying data is the easiest thing in the world, so it would be foolhardy to try to fight it.’”
Elliot Smith, townx.org

3. agender

“The term “agender” means to express one’s gender outside of the male and female genders.”
Chanel Adams, inquisitr.com

4. anachronym

“At first glance, it seems it may be turning into what linguist Ben Zimmer calls an ‘anachronym,’ a word or phrase that remains in usage even as behaviors change.”
Adrienne LaFrance, theatlantic.com

5. bettabilitarianism

“This is consistent with Oliver Wendell Holmes’ ‘bettabilitarianism,’ his answer to utilitarianism; every time we act, we effectively make a bet with the universe which may or may not pay off.”
Thomas Malaby, terranova.blogs.com

6. biketender

“Tomorrow and Saturday, a bicycling bartender, or ‘biketender,’ will deliver cocktails you order up via the Uber app.”
Molly Brown, geekwire.com

7. champing

“The Churches Conservation Trust in the United Kingdom has introduced a new slow-tourism escape it calls “champing”—a play on words for camping in churches.”
Jade Perry, jwtintelligence.com

8. dronie

“The latest self-portrait craze to grip the narcissists of the internet are called dronies – and involve using a remote-controlled aircraft to snap images.”
Jasper Hamill, theregister.co.uk

9. egregore

“A Christian friend pointed me to the concept of an egregore — ‘an autonomous psychic entity made up of, and influencing, the thoughts of a group of people.’”
Sarah Perry, ribbonfarm.com

10. firenado

“The swirling inferno that you see there is called a firenado, basically a tornado on the ground with smoke and flames shooting up from inside of it.”
John Roberts, cnn.com

11. hyperloop

“The hyperloop, you may recall, is a transportation concept pitched in 2013 by industrialist Elon Musk, in which passenger or cargo capsules shoot through tubes at speeds of up to 750 miles an hour.”
Bruce Upbin, forbes.com

12. letterlocking

“She has coined the word ‘letterlocking’ to describe methods of folding and gluing pages to deter snooping.”
Eve M. Kahn, nytimes.com

13. overchoice

“In Future Shock, [Alvin] Toffler coined the term “overchoice”, predicting that consumers would face an increasing range of choices as sellers continually try to differentiate themselves.”
Steve Coulson, yesbutnobutyes.com

14. philanthropreneur

“In practice, the philanthropreneur applies practical and entrepreneurial approaches to the pursuit of philanthropy.”
Rajesh Chandy, theguardian.com

15. sneckdown

“A sneckdown is a curb extension caused by snowfall that shows where a street can be narrowed to slow cars + shorten ped crossing distances.”
@jen_keesmaat

16. sordophone

“Earlier today, we asked for help coming up with a word for that thing where a word is innocent in its native language, but sounds like a dirty word to foreign speakers. And not only did we come up with a word — “sordophone” — but also, a pretty impressive list of words that travelers should be careful about saying.”
Charlie Jane Anders, io9.com

17. sprummer

“Mr Entwisle has proposed “sprummer” – the season between spring and summer – and “sprinter” – an early spring.”
Ben Schott, nytimes.com

18. supertasker

“The term “supertasker” is given to individuals able to successfully accomplish two or more tasks at once — a quality possessed by less than 2.5 percent of people.”
Josh Bennett, dailyutahchronicle.com

19. typogram

“A typogram is a word that, through the manipulation of the letterform itself, illustrates the meaning of the word.”
Ali Gray, iamalidesign.com

20. zemblanity

“Zemblanity, the opposite of serendipity, the faculty of making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries by design.”
William Safire, The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time

In our hunt for a million missing words, we may find more than a few that are “madeupical” or nonce formations (words which are coined by one person, but which never get more widely used). But we think every word deserves a chance to be better known!

Featured image by Dian Lofton/TED, photos by iStock.

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I have the following tables:

table: words

    id word
    1  a
    2  b
    3  c ... so on

table: definitions

 id wid land definition
 1  1   en   the first letter of the Roman alphabet
 2  1   en   the blood group "A"
 3  1   my   Definition of 'a' in Malaysia
 4  1   sg   Definition of 'a' in Singapore
 5  2   en   the second letter....
 6  2   en   the blood group "B"
 7  2   my   Definition of 'b' in Malaysia
 8  2   sg   Definition of 'b' in Singapore
 .... and so on.

My goal is to find a word that does not have a definition in a specific language, so I can add a definition. In this case, I want to pull up the word ‘c’.

So when I try:

"SELECT word FROM words, definition WHERE words.id = wid AND lang != 'my'

I get all words: ‘a’, ‘b’, and ‘c’.

How do I solve this problem?

How do we define a word that has no commonly understood meaning?

Become a member of TranslationDirectory.com at just

$8 per month (paid per year)

---

h Introduction

Bilingualism throughout the world is on the rise due to increased
migration patterns across the globe. It has been estimated
that around half the world’s population is bilingual
(Grosjean, 1982, in Karamat Ali, 2004). Interestingly,
it has also been predicted that soon, «the speakers
for whom English is a second or other language will
outnumber the total for whom it is their first.» (Usmani,
1999, in Karamat Ali, 2004).

However, a matter of some debate among linguists is the precise meaning
of the term bilingualism itself. If we break
the word into its constituents (bi from the
Latin word for «two», lingual meaning «articulated
with the tongue», and ism being the suffix
that describes an action or process) we deduce that
it means to speak two languages, which is indeed
how the term is defined in the dictionary (Dictionary.com).

Now, imagine a young British child (too young to have undergone any
formal foreign language training) who wants to be
a ballerina, and could tell you the difference between
a pirouette and a plié — can
we say she is bilingual? Or are you only bilingual
if your parents are from two different countries,
and have each spoken to you in a different language
since you were born?

Perhaps the real meaning applies to both situations. Perhaps to
neither. Though it may suit the layman, our codified explanation is remarkably
vague. Linguistics students and language researchers
will tell you there is a plethora of definitions,
with ample diversity as to include both situations
mentioned above, and many more.

This essay aims to explore the various meanings that have been attached
to the term, and use them to gather empirical data
from people from different parts of the world, and
coming from a variety of language backgrounds. The
hope is that we may determine which definition is
the most accurate, or which meaning is the most commonly
understood or used. It is possible the data will reflect
that people with different linguistic experience will
have differing ideas as to what constitutes bilingualism.

h    
Literature Review

Aside from documents that are written in two languages (e.g. a bilingual
dictionary), there are two types of bilingualism discussed
in the literature. The first, societal bilingualism,
is where two or more languages are spoken in a society,
and within this there are three sub-categories (Appel
and Muysken, 1987):

1.     
The
society is made up of two monolingual groups who
speak different languages to each other; this situation
is the result of colonisation.

2.     
All
people within the society use more than one language
on a daily basis. This occurs in parts of Asia and
several African countries.

3.     
A
minority group must learn the main language of the
community which is different from their own, whereas
the socially dominant group remain monolingual.

This concept is somewhat straightforward. However, the second type,
individual bilingualism (sometimes known as
bilinguality), is less easily defined and is the
focus of this essay. «It is fairly clear what individual
bilingualism is, but determining whether a given person
is bilingual or not is far from simple.» (Appel and
Muysken, 1987)

Many of the various definitions in existence are so diverse because
they relate to the speaker’s proficiency in two or
more languages. Proficiency is difficult to measure,
as it is a continuum, ranging from absolutely no ability
to complete fluency (indeed, the definition of fluency
would be an essay subject in itself). The wide range
of definitions encompasses the two extremes highlighted
in the introduction above. These are famously provided
by Bloomfield (1933) and Haugen (1953), and illustrated
by Baetens Beardsmore (1986) and Romaine (1995).

Bloomfield states that a bilingual speaker has a «native-like control
of two languages», and is so well spoken in his second
language, that it would be impossible for listeners
to tell him apart from a native speaker. Similar to
this idea is the notion of ambilingualism,
described by Halliday, McIntosh and Strevens (1970,
in Baetens Beardsmore, 1986) in which a speaker’s
competence in both languages (and in all four modalities;
speaking, listening, reading and writing) is «without
any traces of one language in his use of the other»
(though it is unclear what is meant by «traces» —
possibly accent, vocabulary, word order or structure).
This kind of speaker is sometimes referred to as a
balanced bilingual, and is rare, whereas it
has been said that Bloomfield’s perfect bilingual
probably does not even exist (Dewaele, Housen, and
Wei, 2003). Matthews (1997) has modified Bloomfield’s
definition somewhat, into «an effectively equal control
of two native languages.»

In complete contrast, Haugen claims that bilingualism starts when
a speaker can produce complete meaningful utterances
in a language other than his native tongue. This notion
is generally looked upon as being inadequate as a
definition, as many people can greet or thank one
another in a foreign language (which are indeed «complete
meaningful utterances») but would not be able to hold
a conversation in that language (Baetens Beardsmore,
1986). Macnamara (1969) too allows for an overly broad
definition by counting minimal skills in one of the
four modalities mentioned (in Appel and Muysken, 1987).
This can hardly be described as bilingualism.

Similarly, Diebold’s (1964) definition also refers to minimal competence,
for example being able to understand a foreign language,
but not speak it oneself, thus being bilingual to
a degree. This particular example can be described
as passive or receptive bilingualism;
Diebold calls it incipient bilingualism.
But again, there is a drawback in that this definition
is far too broad, and that almost anyone could be
described as being incipient bilinguals if they know
one or two words in another language (Romaine, 1995).

Not all definitions relate to linguistic proficiency or competence.
Weinreich’s (1953) popular definition is that bilingualism
is the process of using two languages alternately.
Mackey (1962) concurs, and adds that the term allows
for the use of not only two languages, but of any
number. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as
multilingualism or plurilingualism,
but for this essay we will too use the term bilingualism
to describe this (Baetens Beardsmore, 1986).

While Bloomfield is too specific, Weinreich and Mackey are too vague.
There is absolutely no indication as to how well the
languages should be spoken, nor is there any mention
of the four modalities. Their incertitude seems almost
deliberate, as if to encompass all possibilities.

Some definitions are psychological; Hamers and Blanc (1990) refer
to bilingualism as being a psychological state, whereby
an individual has access to «more than one linguistic
code» and is able to use them both to communicate.
Other definitions are more sociological; Furlan (2002)
defines a bilingual as someone who, in natural circumstances,
has learnt two languages from birth or early childhood.

More sociological definitions exist in different parts of the world.
In many African countries, the term bilingualism is
normally used to describe a mastery of European languages
in addition to the use of their native African tongues.
In these cases, the ability to speak more than one
local language is rarely considered by the speakers
to be bilingualism, since those languages are seen
to have subordinate positions. This is because so
few of them have been codified, so do not have any
official status (Leinyui, 2005). It is worth pointing
out that the term does not stretch to speaking more
than one dialect; this is known as bidialectism
(Appel and Muysken, 1987).

So where a person is from could have an effect on their view of bilingualism.
Since English is such a commonly spoken language,
even by those who are not native to Britain, the British
have remained more or less monolingual. We tend to
see bilingualism as something rare and fascinating,
or as an ability to be envious of. On the other hand,
for many people living in Cameroon, for example, it
is normal to use four or five languages throughout
the course of a day (Cook, 1991). Their opinions may
differ from the British point of view as to what makes
a person bilingual.

h    
Hypotheses and Methodology

The
aim of this investigation is to find out which of
the many definitions discussed above is the most widely
recognised as being accurate. Having read the literature,
I devised more than one hypothesis about the results
I might obtain. Firstly I thought Bloomfield’s and
Haugen’s vastly opposing views would not be widely
agreed with, and that the results would show that
the participants’ opinions on bilingualism lie somewhere
between the two.

Secondly,
I thought the informants that only speak one language,
or that come from a predominantly monolingual community,
would have a more specific view of bilingualism than
those that speak more than one language, or that come
from a multilingual society. I presumed having no
experience of using multiple languages would narrow
a speaker’s views on what makes someone bilingual.

Thirdly,
I thought it likely that many participants would indicate
that they agree with some definitions only in part,
or believe that some apply only in certain situations.

Given
the limited time and resources available to me to
conduct this investigation, the best way to obtain
the information required would be in the form of questionnaires.
Rather than handing out copies of the definitions
in full and asking participants to «rank» them, I
thought it more appropriate to construct a series
of statements using parts of the definitions in the
literature, and asking the participants to state to
what extent they agree or disagree with them.

I
aimed to obtain responses from a range of people with
different linguistic backgrounds and countries of
origin which may have different linguistic habits
than we are used to here in Britain. The hope was
that I would have enough people from different parts
of the world to be able to compare their results.
I refrained from asking other linguistics students
to take part, as I did not wish to bias the outcomes.
All participants are currently residing, studying,
or visiting in the city of Bristol.

(Please
see Appendix A for the completed forms) The first
part of the questionnaire asked the informants’ age,
gender, nationality, countries of birth and current
residence, and languages spoken by themselves and
by their parents. I also asked that they rate their
own abilities in the languages they listed, if any.
These questions allowed me to categorise the returned
forms in order to compare the responses more easily.

The
second part of the questionnaire consisted of nine
statements, constructed using the definitions mentioned,
and a scale from 1 to 5 for the participants to indicate
how much they agreed or disagreed with what was said.
This would allow me to assign «scores» to each definition
to see which was more widely agreed with.

The
final part of the questionnaire was a space for any
other additional comments the informants might have
had. This was to allow for anything I might have missed
out or anything else relevant they could think of.
Not being bilingual myself (in any sense of the word),
there would more than likely be some things that I
would not have even thought to ask.

h    
Results and Data Analysis

Here
are the graphs that display the three comparisons
I drew (please turn to Appendix B for the figures
that these graphs came from). Figure 1 shows the cumulative
level of agreement from all participants for each
statement. Figure 2 shows the results from the British
participants compared to those from non-British (mostly
non-native English speaking) participants. Finally,
Figure 3 shows a breakdown of the results from different
areas of the world. The numbers were averaged to allow
for the different numbers of informants in the latter
two graphs.

Figure
1

Figure
2

Figure
3

Overall, from what Figure 2 tells us, non-native speakers of English
agreed with each statement more than native speakers
did, excluding two statements. We could interpret
this as monolingual English speakers having more narrow
views on what makes somebody bilingual.

As we can see from all three graphs, Statement 1 was the most widely
agreed with by all, which shows an inclination toward
the sociological sides to the definitions. Figure
3 indicates that the Asian participants were less
convinced that bilinguals alternate their language
use than the African and American informants. Perhaps
this is due to different language habits in Asian
communities. The British and European participants
had similar views to each other, which could be down
to similar patterns of language use.

Statement 2 was the least popular of all, indicating most people
would say that a few «complete meaningful utterances»
in a second language is not enough to be considered
bilingual. This was expected.

The Asian participants agreed with Statement 4, whereas the British
and Americans did not. This indicates that the Asians
think a true bilingual speaker should not have a foreign
accent when talking in either language, reminding
us of the dispute about having «traces» of a language
when using another.

Statement 5 was unexpectedly disagreed with. I thought a lot of participants
would have said bilingual speakers must have learnt
both languages from birth, but this statement was
the second most unpopular of them all.

The non-native English informants agreed with Statement 6 far more
than the English did. Though not completely committed
to the idea, they seem to favour the notion that bilingual
speakers are likely to have roots in more than one
country or culture. The European participants agreed
with this notion in particular.

Statement 7 showed that the British, Europeans, and Africans were
indifferent as to whether or not a bilingual speaker
has equal proficiency in the two languages. The graph
indicates that the Americans thought you can speak
one language better than the other and still be bilingual,
whereas the Asians seemed to disagree.

Another relatively disfavoured statement was 8, especially by the
African informants, who thoroughly disagreed with
the idea that bilinguals speak both languages for
the same amount of time each day. This may be due
to there being various languages for different purposes
or situations in parts of Africa, some of which may
take up more time during the day than others.

Figure 3 tells us that the Europeans and Americans agreed more strongly
with the idea that bilinguals think in two languages
than the other participants. I would need to investigate
further to ascertain why this is the case. Again,
the non-native English informants agreed more than
the monolingual English, implying that if you only
speak one language, you are not aware of the possibility
of thinking in a language at all, much less think
in two; the concepts of thought and of language are
more likely to be separate in a mind that has never
had to consider thinking in another language.

There were some interesting points raised in the section for other
comments at the end of the survey. A Polish informant
said she thinks in either Polish or English, depending
where she is or who she is with. An Italian gentleman
said that you don’t need to think in more than one
language to be bilingual, and agreed that someone
could understand another language without necessarily
being able to speak it oneself (receptive bilingualism).
An English participant mentioned that a person can
still be bilingual, even if they speak with an accent;
what is important is being able to understand what
is said.

In summary, it seems that Bloomfield and Haugen were generally not
seen to have defined bilingualism appropriately; proficiency
is not a valid measure of bilingualism. Nor is time
or experience, as the participants did not accept
Furlan’s idea that bilinguals learn two languages
from birth. Diebold’s incipient bilingualism was mentioned,
but more investigation is required before we can say
it is accepted. It seems Weinreich is the most accurate,
referring to practical use of language rather than
proficiency.

h    
Conclusion

Bilingualism is an entirely subjective concept.. The point where a foreign language
becomes a second language is «either arbitrary or
impossible to determine» (Romaine, 1995). There is
no norm or standard for language proficiency, which
poses a problem for coming up with a psychological
definition. Thus we lean towards a more sociological
definition, which relates to the uses of two or more
languages, rather than a measure of the speakers’
aptitude in them (Appel and Muysken, 1987). This was
reflected in the empirical data gathered.

Given the chance to do this investigation again, I would have asked
more open-ended questions about fluency. I would also
have included questions on code-switching and modalities.
Something I should have made more of an effort to
do was to ask more people for whom English is not
a first language. It would have been really interesting
to have the questionnaire translated into various
other languages also, so that I may have asked others
who do not speak English at all to take part. An obvious
point to make would be that I needed to ask more people,
so that the results obtained are fairer, and more
likely to accurately represent the views of targeted
populations.

---

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