英語的“新單詞”從何而來？
Where Do New Words Come from?
Marcel Danesi
Every year, about 1,000 new wo
rds are added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Where do they come from, and how do they make it into our everyday lives?
With over 170,000 words currently in use in the English language, it might seem we already have plenty. Yet, as our world changes, new ideas and inventions spring forth, and science progresses, our existing words leave gaps in what we want to express and we fill those gaps in several ingenious, practical, and occasionally peculiar ways.
One way is to absorb a word from another language. English has borrowed so many words over its history that nearly half of its vocabulary comes directly from other languages. Sometimes, this is simply because the thing the word describes was borrowed itself. Rome and France brought legal and religious concepts, like altar and jury, to Medieval England, while trade brought crops and cuisine, like Arabic coffee, Italian spaghetti, and Indian cur
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