word-formation

Is combustant a word?

by

I am trying to pin down the definition of the word combustant, but I can’t seem to find anything. Almost all dictionaries are giving me the definition for combustion. If I search with a strict filter, I am seeing random results for anagrams and synonyms which are not even accurate. But the word is in … Read more

Word for something being a misnomer – “misnomerous”? “misnomatic”?

by

What is the word used to describe something as being a misnomer? Answer The adjectival form of the noun ‘misnomer’ is ‘misnomered’: misnomered, adj. Called by a misnomer, misnamed. [“misnomered, adj.”. OED Online. March 2016. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/253143?rskey=Ib8axh&result=5&isAdvanced=false (accessed March 17, 2016).] Attestations for the adjective are dated from 1741 through 1989 in OED … Read more

Squeegee with a squeegee

by

Squeegee is: a scraping implement, usually consisting of a straight-edged blade of india-rubber, gutta-percha, or the like, attached to the end of a long handle, for removing water, mud, etc. [OED] OED‘s earliest citation is from 1844: Holy-stoning the decks..is the worst description of nervous torture of which I ever heard, excepting perhaps, the infliction … Read more

Why word “weighten” aren’t actually a valid word?

by

There’s bunch of words with -en form of word like height–heighten, bright–brighten and others, but weight–weighten aren’t valid pair. Is there any reasons, why is it like that? Is there any rule for that kind of morphology? Answer These “gh” spellings have germanic roots and come down to us from our Anglo-Saxon heritage. A common … Read more

To request “signed photographs” vs “signing photographs”

by

I was doing a Cambridge English Advanced, Use of English, Part 3 task today, when I came across the following sentence: Though fans continued to hound her with requests for SIGN photographs seven decades lates, letters went unanswered and requests for interviews were seldom granted. What I had to do is change the word SIGN … Read more

Morphological analysis of the formation of unhappier

by

I am an English student from Austria and have a question concerning morphology. In the reading I did for one of my introductory courses on linguistics there was a chapter on the analysis of word-formation and which affixes get attached to the word first (in Plag et al. 2009). He explained it quite well that … Read more

Why doesn’t autocorrect software like “unauthorises”?

by

I was writing some documentation and trying to write a sentence that ran like this: It then unauthorises the transaction. I soon realised this wasn’t a word, and it kept correcting this to unauthorised. This got me to wondering: Why is authorises a word but not unauthorises? Answer Numerous adjectives (unauthorized, unbroken, uncooked, etc.) exist … Read more