Page 32 - 6806
P. 32
Literary (bookish) words are not stylistically homogeneous.
Besides general-literary (bookish) words, e.g. harmony, calamity,
alacrity, etc., we may single out various specific subgroups,
namely: 1) terms or scientific words such as, e g., renaissance,
genocide, teletype, etc.;
2) poetic words and archaisms such as, e.g., whilome —
‘formerly’, aught — ‘anything’, ere — ‘before’, albeit —
‘although’, fare — ‘walk’, etc., tarry — ‘remain’, nay — ‘no’;
3) barbarisms and foreign words, such as, e.g., bon mot — ‘a
clever or witty saying’, apropos, faux pas, bouquet, etc. The
colloquial words may be subdivided into:
A. Common colloquial words.
B. Slang, i.e. words which are often regarded as a violation of
the norms of Standard English, e.g. governor for ‘father’,
missus for ‘wife’, a gag for ‘a joke’, dotty for ‘insane’.
C. Professionalisms, i.e. words used in narrow groups bound
by the same occupation, such as, e.g., lab for ‘laboratory’,
hypo for ‘hypodermic syringe’, a buster for ‘a bomb’, etc.
D. Jargonisms, i.e. words marked by their use within a
particular social group and bearing a secret and cryptic
character, e.g. a sucker — ‘a person who is easily
deceived’, a squiffer — ‘a concertina’.
E. Vulgarisms, i.e. coarse words that are not generally used in
public, e.g. bloody, hell, damn, shut up, etc.
F. Dialectical words, e.g. lass, kirk, etc.
G. Colloquial coinages, e.g. newspaperdom, allrightnik, etc.
3. Semes
The modern approach to semantics is based on the
assumption that the inner form of the word (i. e. its meaning)
presents a structure which is called the semantic structure of the
word.
The term “seme” as a microcomponent of meaning was first
introduced by V. Skalichka. The seme reflects specific signs of the
32