Forum / Why...

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Aug 28, 06:34pm

  ...does the word 'defenestration' sound so utterly and violently obscene?

  Then I read this:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestration

  and dicovered that it is a word quite admirably suited to its definition. Now I'm tempted to use it. In a fictional context, of course.

• 
  Christopher Allen

  Aug 28, 07:23pm

  I guess I knew this only because the German for window is "Fenster". Do you have a story at the litzine Defenestration?

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Aug 28, 08:11pm

  Was not aware of it, but I'll check it out. Thanks.

• 
  Christopher Allen

  Aug 28, 09:16pm

  http://www.defenestrationmag.net/

• 
  Christopher Allen

  Aug 28, 09:18pm

  Ah, they're closed to subs until December 20.

• 
  Tina Barry

  Aug 29, 01:02am

  Isn't the act of throwing someone out a window violent?

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Aug 29, 01:51am

  Um, last time I thought about doing that, yes, violence was the context. My upbringing guided me to eventual sublimation. That and the idea of prison. Prison is the great pacifier.

  Actually, Tina, though I'd heard the word before, I never learned the meaning until today, so it was a moment of discovery. Imagine... living so many decades on the earth and still not knowing the meaning of all the words.

• 
  Christopher Allen

  Aug 29, 02:49am

  I think there are 4 million words in English, aren't there?

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Aug 29, 01:10pm

  From the Oxford English Dictionary website:

  "This (the quantity of dictionary entries) suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million."

  The Global Language Monitor web site declares:

  "Number of Words in the English Language: 1,019,729.6 (January 1, 2013 estimate)"

  I was a bit puzzled by the 0.6 at the tail end of the tally, but I sometimes slur my words, so maybe that's what... or contractions, yeah, contractions.

  Not counting all the foreign language that creeps into usage, Spanish, Italian, French, Latin... even Japanese, so that's a lot of words.

• 
  Christopher Allen

  Aug 29, 01:46pm

  Great statistics! I wonder where I heard the 4 million number. Hmmmm. It's comforting to know, though, that we have to learn only one million.

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Aug 29, 03:10pm

  "Given the possibilities for compounds, German would quickly outstrip English, with new legitimate German "words", which Germans would accept without blinking, coined every day."

  http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/06/counting_words

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Aug 30, 06:19pm

  I like to play with compound words in English, though they never catch on the way German words do. I dream them up constantly. It's like a gift, albeit useless.

  Here's one inspired by Jodi Barnes' recent story, "Ethics":

  Pyllogism:

  A convoluted statement posed as a question by a female during post-coital pillow talk which, if answered in any one of two possible ways, will ruin the male's day.

  i.e. "Gwendolyn is so beautiful. You say I'm beautiful. Am I more beautiful than Gwendolyn? Be honest."

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