Shortest words for complex concepts

[mèþru]

Want to see this revived

[akam chinjir]

"true", "good", "bad", "right", "wrong"---all pretty short, though presumably there are shorter analogues in other languages, and maybe they're not complex in the way you're thinking.

[Pabappa]

lek means a mating place for birds or another animals, russian has tok with a similar meaning. (unless the Russian word is just a variant sense of one of the others.)

thats all i have for now, but osme of my posts on the other thread could also fit here since e.g. "teddy bear" is not such a basic concept. so...

Polish miś "teddy bear". i'll only post words that have a narrow meaning, because although words like good, bad, etc can be complex concepts, they can also be simple ones since they have a range of meanings.

[Hyolobrika]

What is a complex concept though?
What makes a concept complex (or simple)?

[Moose-tache]

I think "complex" here is code for "specific."
Having a one-syllable word for a pine tree isn't very specific.
Having a one-syllable word for a species of pine tree isn't very specific.
Having a one-syllable word for a slightly bendy example of one species of pine tree is very specific.

[mèþru]

The old board tile was "One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meanings"
I wanted this thread to be broader - not specifically monosyllabic and with a broader range of allowed meanings. The vagueness is therefore intentional.

[Neon Fox]

Shed: the place where two sets of warp threads are held away from each other so that the weft can be passed between them in weaving.
Fell: Where the completed cloth turns into warp threads--not the same as the shed, because the fell always exists but the shed doesn't have to.

[Hyolobrika]

Shed: the place where two sets of warp threads are held away from each other so that the weft can be passed between them in weaving.
Fell: Where the completed cloth turns into warp threads--not the same as the shed, because the fell always exists but the shed doesn't have to.

Are those complex or just unfamiliar?

[Neon Fox]

Well, they aren't unfamiliar to me! Everyone else gets to make their own decisions.

[Xwtek]

Indonesia have word "am", that means "not limited to certain person or race"

[Pabappa]

orf, a disease of sheep and shepherds.
dun, a collector of debts, or a notice to send payment.
Jp daigomi, essential part of an experience
Sp culera, underwear stain
Sp ñapa lagniappe; complimentary gift awarded to a valued customer
Dutch wee labor contractions

Jp might have a lot that are coined from 2 Chinese readings and thus only 2 syllables long.

I found this site ... http://sr.termwiki.com/SR/wire_%E2%82%86 .... e.g. жица is Serbian for "At the wet end of the paper machine, a copper, bronze or synthetic screen that receives the suspension of water and fiber from the head-box." Im pretty sure this is just a special use of the Serbian word for wire, given that https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B6%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0 exists, but ... there might be some useful things t here. I havent checked out that site beyond this page though, so for all i know it could just be an SEO trap and have no useful content.

[Qwynegold]

In Swedish fack means a tray for papers or mail, but it also means workers' union.

[Pabappa]

Spanish:

coja back of the knee ... Not sure if related to pedicoj "jumping on one foot" (not listed as a verb, just a noun)
coz to kick with the hind leg
quid essence, gist
delco distributor
balí offering food to all animals
mulla digging around vines


My strategy is just randomly flipping through an old paper dictionary, so i didnt check etymologies for most of these ...just now I removed alfana "a strong and spirited horse " since it looks to be a breed of horse, not just a word for a strong horse in general.

I'm not sure why the dictionary lists so many nouns without associated verbs.

Chinese has monosyllables for all of the elements in the periodic table.

[Halian]

English phone for a computer, television studio, video arcade, telephone, and countless other things, all in a single device that fits in your pants pocket.

[Pabappa]

Spanish bojar "circumnavigate; measure the perimeter of". found it while checking to see if "bojo" was a word in any langiuage.

re, the phone word: that doesnt fit, imo, because it doesnt *specifically* mean that. even smartphone would not be that specific, since some military smartphones lack basic functions but still have Internet.

[Xwtek]

Indonesian has a word piutang that means "accounts receivable"

[Kuchigakatai]

It astonishes me how Mandarin is often willing to abbreviate names of countries and languages into monosyllables. For example, the following is a very typical dictionary title:

法漢詞典 [Trad. Chinese]
fǎ-hàn cídiǎn
French-Chinese Dictionary

French is usually 法文 fǎwén and Chinese is usually 漢語 hànyǔ, but in this case, the root of the words have been grabbed and compounded into 法漢 fǎ-hàn "French-Chinese".


One time, I joined a Chinese chat group about learning French and visiting France. Someone asked me where I was from in French, and when I replied in French, someone else asked what I had said. In the spirit of laziness and for the amusement of everyone, a girl there translated what I had said thus:

生于萨，长于萨，住于加拿大。[Simpl. Chinese]
shēng yú sà, zhǎng yú sà, zhù yú jiānádà
be.born in El.Salvador, grow.up in El.Salvador, live in Canada
'He was born in El Salvador, grew up in El Salvador, and is living in Canada.'

This is admittedly Literary Chinese, as using the preposition 于 yú for location is not normal in speech (normally you'd use the coverb 在 zài), but her choice of abbreviating 萨尔瓦多 sàěrwáduō 'El Salvador' to a simple 萨 sà is astonishing. This is not at all a country people in China often talk about.

I have seen before that Chinese high school textbooks teach country abbreviations, including 萨 sà 'El Salvador', and this being China, students are supposedly expected to memorize them, but I don't know if people in the group could really understand the abbreviation, or if the girl was obscuring the country name for her own amusement or what.

Note that Canada, a country the Chinese do talk about, has no similar one-character abbreviation, probably because all three characters are very common (加 jiā 'to add; plus', 拿 ná 'grab; (colloquial direct object marker)', 大 dà 'big').

[akam chinjir]

You can get 加拿大 abbreviated too, at least in 加幣 (Canadian dollar). I'm pretty sure I've also seen it in a shop name or something like that.

[Vijay]

I mean, historically, polysyllabic words weren't the norm in Chinese, so it would seem to make sense.

[Kuchigakatai]

gig = gigabyte (typically 1024 mebibytes, or, chiefly among storage sellers, a metric 1000 megabytes).

Seen in a discussion of Scottish urban planning and architecture: manse, the house where the minister of the local parish lives.