English Vocabulary Today

Table of contents



Introduction



1 A brief history

2 The dictionary

2.1 About the size of it

2.2 Part-of-speech

2.3 Set phrases

2.4 Spelling and pronunciation

2.5 Etymology

3 The mental lexicon

3.1 An entry in the mental lexicon

3.2 View of the world

4 Extension

4.1 Metaphor and metonymy

4.2 Verbs and prepositions

5 Change of meaning

5.1 New meanings for old words

5.1.1 Updating of the referent

5.1.2 Application to a new domain

5.1.3 Reinterpretation

5.1.4 Frequency considerations

5.1.5 Point of view

5.1.6 Weakening

5.1.7 Phrase abbreviation

5.2 New words for old meanings

5.2.1 Fashion

5.2.2 Euphemism

5.3 Respelling

5.4 Relics

6 Meaningful relations

6.1 Hyponyms and hypernyms

6.2 Synonyms

6.3 Antonyms

6.4 Homonyms (Homophones and homographs)

6.5 Contronyms

6.6 Retronyms

7 Compounds and blends

7.1 Compounds

7.2 Neo-classical compounds

7.3 Blends

8 Affixes

8.1 Prefixes and suffixes

8.2 Back formation

9 Zero derivation

9.1 Noun to verb

9.2 Noun to adjective

9.3 Verb to noun

9.4 Verb to adjective

9.5 Adjective to noun

9.6 Adjective to verb

9.7 Other conversions

9.8 Proper names to common nouns

10 Shortening, alphabetisms and acronyms

10.1 Shortening or clipping

10.2 Alphabetisms

10.3 Textese

10.4 Acronyms

11 Reduplication

11.1 Plain reduplication

11.2 Reduplication with vowel alternation

11.3 Rhyming reduplication

12 Imports

12.1 Loan-words

12.2 Cultural contact in Europe

12.3 Contact

Barry J. Blake is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at La Trobe University, Australia, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is well known for a range of publications on Australian Aboriginal languages and language in general. His books include Case, Playing with Words, All about Language and Secret Language.