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Memories of the 28th Century

Missing Words

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It is said that English has more words than any other language. I have not counted all the words in every language, so I don’t know for sure, but I have read things to that effect enough time that I have come to believe it. Even with all those words, it is possible that some have been missed, words that should be in the language but are not.

I started this after I saw the freshly coined word “islamophobia” in the head line of an editorial (I really should stop reading newspapers). My thought when I saw that word was that the writer really meant something relating to the hatred of Islam, not fear; phobia is from the Ancient Greek word for fear. While people often do hate the things they fear, there are things that one might fear without hating it, and there are things that one might hate without fearing them. I couldn’t and still can’t think of a word meaning hatred that has a combinatory form. The closest I came was “abhorrence”, but that hasn't been used that way in the past.


While I am at it, there probably are other words that are missing, but I can only think of a bunch of compound words that use "-phobia" as part of the word that are truly about hatred or disgust rather than fear. Don't be surprised if you seeme using some new words soon.

Fortunately, I am not the only one who has encountered this problem. http://www.newser.com/story/161020/1...quivalent.html
Most of these are useful, but they were quite expressible in English, so they aren't all that new to us.
Here are a dozen more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/samjparker/1...ish#.tuElqnjoY . Most of these are unnecessary, because we already have well-established terms for them, but the second: “esprit d'escalier" is "thinking of a witty comeback when it’s too late," and that happens to all of us from time to time.
And here are some from French: http://www.elenastravelgram.com/2014...nch-words.html . This list has the word "Dépaysement" which means when one truly understands that he isn't at home anymore; I suppose it is close to "We're not in Kansas anymore."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/...rticle7200625/
http://www.matinee.co.uk/blog/five-f...anguage-lacks/

These and a few other websites mostly repeat what was on the first few places I looked at, but I am still not satisfied. I still think we need to be a little blunter in some of the ways that lead to such words as "Backpfeifengesicht." When I started this search, I was thinking about correcting or improving words that use "-phobia" with a suffix that expresses loathing or disgust rather than fear. After additional thought and searching it appears that there is such a prefix "mis-", as in misanthrope. Problem solved and the solution is much better than I expected, and I am mildly ashamed that this solution didn’t come to mind immediately. I use the word “misanthrope" frequently; I even have it on my cards, but I didn’t think of it in other contexts. Now I'll have to get people to attach that, rather than using -phobia.
http://wordquests.info/cgi/ice2-for....HIGHLIGHT=miso

But I will try to remember to look for the other words that I thought English lacked. If you think of any, then please let me know.

Updated 09-23-2015 at 01:27 PM by PeterL

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