Old Words for New Worlds: Modern Scientific and Technological Word-Formation

Abstract

BAUGH WROTE IN 1935 THAT DURING the preceding century the growth of science and related had been the chief influence on the vocabulary of English (367). Today he have to revise the observation only by extending its time-span, for science and technology have continued to produce large numbers of new terms and to contribute many of them to the general vocabulary. For instance, C. Barnhart wrote that almost half of the new words printed in his dictionary supplement for 1982 were scientific and technical terms, some appearing only in specialized journals but many others in widely circulated periodicals and books (1982-85, 1: 53). Aside from its magnitude, however, the contribution of science and technology to the English vocabulary has not been established. In particular, we do not know whether or how modern scientific terms differ from other words etymologically or semiotically. Until recently, they have been regarded as alien and obscure. Most observers have accepted Jespersen's (1931) assertion that modern science borrows heavily from Latin and Greek roots to create compound words, some of which would have struck Demosthenes and Cicero as bold, many of them even as indefensible or incomprehensible innovations (122-23). In 1980, however, Caso (1980, 101) suggested, after studying the etymologies of 3,718 terms from physics and the earth sciences, that classical sources are being superseded by others ... in at least some fields of twentieth-century science. More recently, Raad (1989, 128) has echoed and extended Caso's claim: