Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
An unpaired word is one that, according to the usual rules of the language, would appear to have a related word but does not. [1] Such words usually have a prefix or suffix that would imply that there is an antonym , with the prefix or suffix being absent or opposite.
A morphological gap is the absence of a word that could exist given the morphological rules of a language, including its affixes. [1] For example, in English a deverbal noun can be formed by adding either the suffix -al or -(t)ion to certain verbs (typically words from Latin through Anglo-Norman French or Old French).
For example, the word undevout appears in Webster's dictionary of 1828, while the pattern of non-person could conceivably be extended to non-platypus. Conversely, some words appear to be a prefixed form of an opposite, but the opposite term does not exist, such as inept, which appears to be in-+ *ept; such a word is known as an unpaired word.
English does have some words that are associated with gender, but it does not have a true grammatical gender system. "English used to have grammatical gender. We started losing it as a language ...
AOL
Why are they included? Aaadddaaammm 07:01, 16 October 2006 (UTC) There is no opposite to them, such as ageful, countful or rightless. violet/riga 21:54, 17 October 2006 (UTC) But they do have related words. In, the prefix set the opposite words are all the real word minus the prefix. See how the two sets seem fundamentally different?
Untranslatability is the property of text or speech for which no equivalent can be found when translated into another (given) language. A text that is considered to be untranslatable is considered a lacuna, or lexical gap.
A dialectal word can become part of the standard language in a compound, but not in its root form: e.g. blatherskite ("one who talks nonsense"), as Scots has the word skite ("contemptible person"). A word can become obsolete in its root form but remain current in a compound: e.g. lukewarm from Middle English luke ("tepid").