Modern Trends in Scientific Terminology: Morphology and Metaphor

Abstract

R ECENTLY COINED SCIENTIFIC WORDS IN ENGLISH show an increased variety in the sources and processes of their formation. Such a trend seems characteristic of modern English word formation in general, noticeably in the high percentage of new compound words (Algeo 1980; Barnhart et al. 1973, 1980).1 But in the developments are dramatic and more immediately operative in a communicative sense. While a great deal of scientific vocabulary is still formed in the traditional method from Latin and roots and affixes, more of the words of modern manipulate common elements in ways which do not conform to the same linguistic requirements expected in the past by both the scientist and the layman. Even though sheer volume may still be in favor of classical derivation, especially in the biological sciences, where strict rules of nomenclature apply, the older morphological method is no longer what overwhelmingly typifies scientific terminology. New meanings are now more freely created by composing them from known words through the use of conjoining, abbreviating, and metaphoric strategies. This new regenerative trend is particularly prominent in the developing sciences, where terms are being produced with high frequency-such terms as in astronomy (gravity tunnel, quasar), genetics (blast cell, error), computer (bug, wimp), nuclear technology (body burden, rad), space (gravity assist, swingby), and particle physics (glueball, quark). At a time of tremendous expansion in scientific knowledge, terminology has come to rely on recycling the existing resources of the language by using available words to produce new ones in the form of acronyms, blends, analogies, metaphors and, most typically, compounds. A fallacy perhaps still persists that the terms of need to be entirely unfamiliar and distinct from everyday language. Not long ago, a writer on scientific terminology argued that geological vocabulary admits a less satisfactory treatment than that of the other sciences. Partly this is due to the fact that in speaking or writing of land-forms the geologist can often use the words familiar to the admirer of scenerywords such as flood, plain, fault and others which scarcely rank as words of science (Savory 1967, 105). Thirty-five years ago, scientific vocabulary was described as nearly one hundred percent Latin or Latinized Greek