Shortest words for complex concepts

[Kuchigakatai]

Good one! You taught me a new word there. FWIW according to my dictionary the meaning is closer to the definition Ser gives.

Ah, fascinating. Thanks Ser.

I learnt that word on (what I think was essentially) this thread maybe 15 years ago.

It sounds like that word is very uncommon in French though, since Ars Lande didn't know it. It was very common in El Salvador when I grew up, where I often got to hear it as a kid as the adults told us to stop playing outside in the evening ("get inside or you're going to get sick from the sereno!").

I am using past tense here because I am told kids prefer to be on their phones or computers nowadays instead, so playing with neighbour kids in a pasaje 'dead-end street, cul-de-sac' is less of a thing. (It was already like this before the virus for that matter.)

[bradrn]

Good one! You taught me a new word there. FWIW according to my dictionary the meaning is closer to the definition Ser gives.

Ah, fascinating. Thanks Ser.

I learnt that word on (what I think was essentially) this thread maybe 15 years ago.

It sounds like that word is very uncommon in French though, since Ars Lande didn't know it. It was very common in El Salvador when I grew up, where I often got to hear it as a kid as the adults told us to stop playing outside in the evening ("get inside or you're going to get sick from the sereno!").

I don’t know anything of either French or Spanish, but I’d be interested if you know: do you have any idea how common that word is in Spain as opposed to El Salvador? It would be interesting to know if sereno is today a Latin American-specfic term, but it would be just as interesting to know if it’s common in Spain but not France.

Now that you mention it, I’ve always thought English has a rather large set of short words for specific weather-related concepts: rain, snow, sleet, hail, storm, fog, smog, dew, frost etc. None of these concepts are particularly complex in and of themselves, but taken together, each one is surprisingly specific. Everyone knows the old Eskimos have twenty words for snow saying, but it’s more true of English words for rain!

[sasasha]

Ah, fascinating. Thanks Ser.

I learnt that word on (what I think was essentially) this thread maybe 15 years ago.

It sounds like that word is very uncommon in French though, since Ars Lande didn't know it. It was very common in El Salvador when I grew up, where I often got to hear it as a kid as the adults told us to stop playing outside in the evening ("get inside or you're going to get sick from the sereno!").

I don’t know anything of either French or Spanish, but I’d be interested if you know: do you have any idea how common that word is in Spain as opposed to El Salvador? It would be interesting to know if sereno is today a Latin American-specfic term, but it would be just as interesting to know if it’s common in Spain but not France.

Now that you mention it, I’ve always thought English has a rather large set of short words for specific weather-related concepts: rain, snow, sleet, hail, storm, fog, smog, dew, frost etc. None of these concepts are particularly complex in and of themselves, but taken together, each one is surprisingly specific. Everyone knows the old Eskimos have twenty words for snow saying, but it’s more true of English words for rain!

Also shower, squall and mist. And don't forget the verb-only ones: spitting, pouring, chucking/pissing it down, lashing/bucketing down... apparently my partner says he might say "it's dribbling", when looking out the window.

So this led me to discover my next submissions: graupel 'small particles of snow with a fragile crust of ice; soft hail'.

And virga, which has me excited because I have seen this a lot out on walks and now have a word for it: a shaft of precipitation in the distance that doesn't reach the ground.

News to me...

Re sereno, I will ask some Spanish friends and report back.

[bradrn]

It sounds like that word is very uncommon in French though, since Ars Lande didn't know it. It was very common in El Salvador when I grew up, where I often got to hear it as a kid as the adults told us to stop playing outside in the evening ("get inside or you're going to get sick from the sereno!").

I don’t know anything of either French or Spanish, but I’d be interested if you know: do you have any idea how common that word is in Spain as opposed to El Salvador? It would be interesting to know if sereno is today a Latin American-specfic term, but it would be just as interesting to know if it’s common in Spain but not France.

Now that you mention it, I’ve always thought English has a rather large set of short words for specific weather-related concepts: rain, snow, sleet, hail, storm, fog, smog, dew, frost etc. None of these concepts are particularly complex in and of themselves, but taken together, each one is surprisingly specific. Everyone knows the old Eskimos have twenty words for snow saying, but it’s more true of English words for rain!

Also shower, squall and mist.

True, I forgot those ones. But they’re a bit more obscure.

(Oh, and I just remembered another one: drizzle.)

And don't forget the verb-only ones: spitting, pouring, chucking/pissing it down, lashing/bucketing down... apparently my partner says he might say "it's dribbling", when looking out the window.

Aren’t those more metaphorical extensions of pre-existing words rather than dedicated words?

[sasasha]

I don’t know anything of either French or Spanish, but I’d be interested if you know: do you have any idea how common that word is in Spain as opposed to El Salvador? It would be interesting to know if sereno is today a Latin American-specfic term, but it would be just as interesting to know if it’s common in Spain but not France.

Now that you mention it, I’ve always thought English has a rather large set of short words for specific weather-related concepts: rain, snow, sleet, hail, storm, fog, smog, dew, frost etc. None of these concepts are particularly complex in and of themselves, but taken together, each one is surprisingly specific. Everyone knows the old Eskimos have twenty words for snow saying, but it’s more true of English words for rain!

Also shower, squall and mist.

True, I forgot those ones. But they’re a bit more obscure.

(Oh, and I just remembered another one: drizzle.)

And don't forget the verb-only ones: spitting, pouring, chucking/pissing it down, lashing/bucketing down... apparently my partner says he might say "it's dribbling", when looking out the window.

Aren’t those more metaphorical extensions of pre-existing words rather than dedicated words?

I agree it seems so but actually I don't know, what's the line between metaphorical extension and derivation via narrowing?

[Travis B.]

Another weather term in English is flaking, refering to snow that is light to the point that it is composed of individual, discrete flakes.

[Linguoboy]

Irish is said to have dozens of words for rain, but most of these are compositional (e.g. seadbhraonta "blown droplets of rain; windborne drizzle") which makes them too lengthy for this thread.

One exception might be uaineadh (only three phonemes in my pronunciation) which specifically refers to the interval between bouts of rain. (It's a derivation of uain which can translate "interval, opportune time" and host of other meanings.)

[Kuchigakatai]

Ah, fascinating. Thanks Ser.

I learnt that word on (what I think was essentially) this thread maybe 15 years ago.

It sounds like that word is very uncommon in French though, since Ars Lande didn't know it. It was very common in El Salvador when I grew up, where I often got to hear it as a kid as the adults told us to stop playing outside in the evening ("get inside or you're going to get sick from the sereno!").

I don’t know anything of either French or Spanish, but I’d be interested if you know: do you have any idea how common that word is in Spain as opposed to El Salvador? It would be interesting to know if sereno is today a Latin American-specfic term, but it would be just as interesting to know if it’s common in Spain but not France.

I have no idea. So I just asked three people from Spain I sometimes talk to, and they told me they had never heard this use of the word.

[Linguoboy]

I have no idea. So I just asked three people from Spain I sometimes talk to, and they told me they had never heard this use of the word.

Oddly, though, there's an equivalent in Catalan, just in the feminine form, serena. The DIEC even includes the example "Guardeu-vos de la serena," suggesting that the notion that it could make you ill is present there as well. (The DCVB mentions the popular saying «La serena mata les dones».)

[bradrn]

From Nivkh: a ‘sazhen [= unit of length, equivalent to 2.13 metres]’ (Gruzdeva 1998), e ‘comb’ (Shiraishi 2006).

[Imralu]

One exception might be uaineadh (only three phonemes in my pronunciation) which specifically refers to the interval between bouts of rain. (It's a derivation of uain which can translate "interval, opportune time" and host of other meanings.)

I kind of love that this seems just a couple of steps away from acknowledging rain as the default state and doing away with a simple means of saying "It's raining" and instead having specific word for "not raining" (which could then of course be negated if you need to indicate that it is not in fact not raining). #ConlangIdeasForRainyClimates

[Imralu]

From Nivkh: a ‘sazhen [= unit of length, equivalent to 2.13 metres]’ (Gruzdeva 1998), e ‘comb’ (Shiraishi 2006).

Any measure when defined by another seems very specific. A foot is a unit of length equivalent to 0.3048 metres. A metre is a unit of length equivalent to 3.2808399 feet.

It's not really a short word, but my favourite word for a distance is Finnish poronkusema, which is the distance a reindeer (poro; genitive: poron) can travel without needing to pee (kusta; agent participle: kusema), about 7.5 km.