Shortest words for basic concepts

[Richard W]

C.f. oak, ash, elm, plane, yew... in fact, among native trees that aren't "-nut" or "-berry", I think monosyllables are the rule in English (though of course some monosyllables are longer than others). I guess holly and hornbeam are exceptions.

Maple, aspen, rowan, willow, sallow, poplar, juniper...

(is there a native synonym for juniper, actually? Swedish has the quite simple /e:n/ and the rest of Scandinavian isn't much more complex either.)

It just doesn't seem notable enough in English tradition until it becomes the flavouring for "mother's ruin", i.e. gin. It seems that most British gin doesn't use British juniper. By contrast, juniper has traditional uses in Scandinavia.

'Rowan' is the fancy name for 'mountain ash'.

Contrary to the expected pattern, 'aspen' has displaced the shorted form 'asp'.

[Linguoboy]

Contrary to the expected pattern, 'aspen' has displaced the shorted form 'asp'.

That's parallel to linden displacing lime in American English.

[Pabappa]

Wiktionary says that the Scandinavian words for juniper are originally loans from Latin.... https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/einir#Old_Norse But if so the loss of the final syllable seems irregular .

[Salmoneus]

[Junipers do exist here, but I think are extremely rare. Wikipedia's map shows them in Scotland and in just a few patches of England.

This has been educational. I was going to say that poplars were non-native... but apparently, although almost all of them are, there are a tiny number of a native strain of poplars. The word is obviously a loanword, so it may be that people just didn't have a name for them until they started being imported in larger numbers from the continent?

I had no idea that aspens existed in this country. They're apparently a type of poplar, so maybe we just call them poplars or something? Or maybe they're in areas I'm not familiar with. And yes, they used to be known as asps.

Similarly, I knew sycamores and acers were non-native (though the former are quite common now), but I didn't realise there was a native maple. But apparently there is, though I'm not sure which.

[Linguoboy]

Hawai'ian pī "stingy; stinginess"

[Tropylium]

Clearly an old loanword from Finnish pihi 'id.'

[dhok]

Tilth, the condition of agricultural soil.

Several birds have monosyllabic names, such as the shrike, grebe, shag, coot and chough /tʃʌf/.

What’s the best we can do for the seasons? Osage has pee for spring and American English has fall. What about summer and winter?

Mississippi Valley Siouan is actually a goldmine for short words, because PS disyllables almost always lost the vowel of the first syllable. Some other examples:

Lakota ní 's/he lives'
Lakota á 'armpit'
Osage sį 'arrowroot'
Hoocąk sé: 'snowshoes'
Osage htą 'fall (of the year)', there's seasons again
Osage šta 'bald'
Osage ta 'ask (for)'
Chiwere čé 'bison'
Lakota phá 'bitter'
Osage xé 'to bury'
Osage so 'to cut into strips'
Osage į 'to suckle'

And, from further afield in Siouan:

Biloxi ma: 'turkey' (admittedly this is almost a semantic prime in North America, but it's multisyllabic in Algonquian *pere:wa and Nahuatl huexolotl; Caddo has nuʔ, but Pawnee has a much longer compound. Also from Caddo are ʔut 'raccoon', ʔi:ʔ 'potato', kas 'hail' and ʔas 'persimmon'.)
Catawba sę 'to cut wood'

[Nortaneous]

Marshallese:
/jɨw/ 'sprouted coconut'
/jɨrʷ/ 'flock of birds'
/ɰarʲ/ 'Arcturus'
/jatʲ/ 'bunch of bananas'
/jarˠ/ 'haul canoe to shore'
/jarˠ/ 'discarded pandanus key'
/ɰatˠ/ 'gallbladder'
/ɰatˠ/ 'bow waves from a ship'
/jatˠ/ 'reputation'
/pˠɘlʷ/ 'taro patch'
/pˠɘtʲ/ 'swollen corpse'