I think axiom should fit, but according to its official definition, an axiom is a statement that is taken to be true, and as far as I know, a word can’t make an statement by its own.

  • fubo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    33
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Words aren’t created by definitions.

    Definitions are summaries of the usage of words.

    Usage comes first, not definition. Dictionaries, glossaries, etc. are a commentary on usage, attempting to explain to new users of a word what the other people already using that word mean by it.

    If someone starts calling some teddy-bears “squee-bears”, they don’t have to have a written-out definition in mind before they do this. Maybe later, if the term “squee-bear” catches on, someone will write down a definition for it, as a summary of how they’ve observed the term being used.

    • Toast@lemmy.film
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      You’d have to be pretty strict about what you mean by ‘definition’ in order to claim this. When words are coined, it seems likely that the speaker knows what he means by the word, even if he hasn’t written the definition down somewhere

      • fubo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        When Bob comes up with the word “squee-bear”, he knows a squee-bear when he sees one, but he might not yet have worked out exactly what makes it a squee-bear to him. He might not yet be able to offer a definition. And if Bob talks about squee-bears to Alice and Charlie, they might start using the word in slightly different ways from Bob.

        This sort of thing happens in the history of science, for instance. People start talking about “planets” (originally meaning “wandering stars”) or “atoms” (“indivisible units”) and then only later does a community of speakers nail down exactly what they mean by “planet” or “atom” and it turns out that planets aren’t stars and atoms aren’t indivisible.

        For people, language use is axiomatic — and messy. We talk about things even when we don’t know what they are; we talk about things even when we’re not 100% sure what we mean.

        Definitions come later.

        People run into problems when they put definitions ahead of reality. That’s what we see, for example, when creationists try to talk about “species”, or transphobes about “woman”. They act as if they want a simplistic definition they learned as a child to apply forever, in all context, and for anyone who disagrees to be just wrong. But that’s not how language works and it’s not how reality works.

        • Toast@lemmy.film
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’m not disagreeing that it can sometimes happen as you’ve illustrated above. I am saying that it often does happen that coiners of new words know just what they mean by them. The person who came up with ‘electrocute’ knew exactly what he meant by it - to kill with electricity (notice how the word is a portmanteau of electricity and execute). That the word has started to be used by some as a word to mean something less specific is to me unfortunate, but is a good example of how words change over time. At any rate, it seems obvious that sometimes the definitions of words arrive fully formed at their birth, though not always so

            • Toast@lemmy.film
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Well, it certainly did, and that is the way I use it. I have heard people use it in other ways

              • FredericChopin_@feddit.uk
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                From the Oxford English Dictionary.

                Electrocute (verb)

                to injure or kill someone by passing electricity through their body

      • TheYear2525@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        The vast majority of words in natural languages aren’t created by somebody like an invention. They slowly form over time and over populations. In fact, I don’t think any of the words in your comment were “coined” in the sense that, say, Shakespeare coined “dwindle”.

        Just like species change, I suppose for any precise definition and pronunciation of a word, you could find a person who was the first to use it, but it would almost always be a tiny variation of an existing word, and wouldn’t be considered “new” to a native speaker at that time and place, just a mild accent.

        • wjrii@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Going off on a tangent here, but the chances that Shakespeare truly invented any words or more than a handful of distinguishable uses is vanishingly small. What Shakespeare did was (1) be a half-educated middle class rube, (2) get popular enough that his colleagues wanted to collect his plays and a printer wanted to publish them, and (3) retained his reputation through the generations so that volume of plays wasn’t left to rot.

          He was absolutely brilliant, don’t get me wrong (most Anti-Stratfordians are a weird combination of classist and ignorant), but the brilliance lies in the ways he played with the forms of poetry and drama, how he found the humanity in so many of his characters (though not all), and how he corralled all of his influences, cultural, literary, personal, and historical, into wholes that were way beyond the sum of their parts. Given the rigidity of Tudor education and expectations of the upper classes, I’d argue a unique voice like his would almost have to come from an “upstart crow.” From the perspective of linguistic novelty though, by and large his was just the first known use of words, which were likely in some degree of use in at least one of his various communities (actors, writers, Londoners, and Strafordians to name a few). The OED can only cite the earliest written sources its researchers have found. The fact that so many of “his” communities were poorly documented in the historical and literary record probably explains most of the words ascribed to him.

  • Barky@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    Axiomatic is pretty good. Irreducible is another. However, I would argue there are no undescribable words. If that were true, no one could learn certain words in other languages

    • Zozano@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I wonder if anyone has ever said something was indescribable, it was just because they weren’t aware of the word needed to describe it.

      Even in a way, saying something was indescribable is doing a lot of heavy lifting by itself, which is weird.

      • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        There are many, MANY words that do not have a 1 to 1 relationship between languages. Love is actually one of the more basic concepts most all languages have a word for.

        The areas languages gets really interesting are in the idioms. THOSE are the expressions that generally take many words to explain.

        Which is why if you want to write easily translatable text, never use idioms.

        • kozel@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          As far as I understand, we were not speaking about struggles with translating from one language to another, but about explaining a word within the original language.

        • CobblerScholar@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          German is a great example of having words that mean a whole phrase in English, Schadenfreude (humor at someone’s expense) for one

  • Sertou@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

    Fundamental is the term used to describe concepts like points in geometry. This seems like an analogous case, so I suggest it for your use here.

    • reddig33@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The definition of crack in that instance would be something along the lines of: “The snapping sound the air makes when creating a small sonic boom. Like that of a whip cutting through the air.”

      Even onomatopoeia has synonyms. Like some people say Atchoo. Some say kerchew. And then other languages say other words for the same sound.

  • meco03211@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    That shouldn’t be the case. Where that breaks down in more formal contexts is circular definitions. You don’t want to define one word using others that simply reference the defined word in their own definition. All words can be defined using the other available words. At some point it would become circular, but that’s of no consequence in the scope of all words.

  • kozel@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Maybe not exactly what you’re looking for, but you could be interested in “circular definition”.

  • Melllvar@startrek.website
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    All words all symbolic of their referents, but the symbolism is usually arbitrary. So I don’t think there are actually any words like that.