Originally those were like that too maybe, but words only get real meaning by being used by people a bunch and universally understood as a specific thing. Anyone can make up any combination of words, but nobody will understand what you are actually talking about.
Not so sure about that
Many words, especially combined ones, have implicit meaning, because of the words they use
It’s not like ‘chainsaw’ could mean a ‘mouse trap’, because we already know what a saw and what a chain is
Of course in principle words are consensual social constructs, but I always find it highly irritating, that we throw out the baby with the water, by saying, nothing means anything until we decide on it
I also get the im pression that the memes with German com pound words take off be cause English split all their com pounded words with spaces, so you get stuff like “chain saw” in stead of “motorsag” and so on.
We Norwegians who in stead make fun of people who write com pounded words with spaces (orddelingsfeil, wortteilenfehl oder so) don’t really get their fascin ation.
Well, yeah, it’s a name of a thing, but it’s not like a brand product name.
Just like chainsaw is the name for a tool
At least I don’t know of any other describing this kind of tool, that would be more general
Or maybe I just understood you wrong…?
I meant as in that this word isnt in a dictionary. Its just a name that was made up for this product. Nobody uses it ever.
Are all not all product names kinda made up?
Like a “Steinschleuder” also is made up to describe the item - just like my chainsaw example earlier
it’s like how you can just make up a larger number by adding one to it, that doesn’t make it a real number used by anyone.
it needs to actually see use and be useful
Originally those were like that too maybe, but words only get real meaning by being used by people a bunch and universally understood as a specific thing. Anyone can make up any combination of words, but nobody will understand what you are actually talking about.
Not so sure about that
Many words, especially combined ones, have implicit meaning, because of the words they use
It’s not like ‘chainsaw’ could mean a ‘mouse trap’, because we already know what a saw and what a chain is
Of course in principle words are consensual social constructs, but I always find it highly irritating, that we throw out the baby with the water, by saying, nothing means anything until we decide on it
IIRC the same theme from the absurd formal name that the patent agency used to describe it’s use case in a formal way.
I also get the im pression that the memes with German com pound words take off be cause English split all their com pounded words with spaces, so you get stuff like “chain saw” in stead of “motorsag” and so on.
We Norwegians who in stead make fun of people who write com pounded words with spaces (orddelingsfeil, wortteilenfehl oder so) don’t really get their fascin ation.
english is also a big fan of the hyphenated words, which is like when christians decided that puffins are fish so they can eat birds during lent.