Restart thread: Vocabulary words vs. vocabulary
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Don Sunday, June 12, 2005, 17:28 GMT
"Vocabulary words" is one of my pet peeves. The word "vocabulary" is a noun not an adjective. You only need to say ''vocabulary''. Why do some people say ''vocabulary words''? I've even heard some English teachers tell their students to write down their ''vocabulary words''. greg Sunday, June 12, 2005, 18:33 GMT Here in your example, it seems <vocabulary> has been nominalised, perhaps so merged as in *<vocabularyword>. If this is acceptable, then <vocabulary> might be considered functioning as an insistence prefix or else a compound noun, not an adjective. Is <vocabulary words> perceived as a quasi-pleonasm or does it convey new meaning ? quasimodo Sunday, June 12, 2005, 18:39 GMT yeah, what he said ^ Kirk Sunday, June 12, 2005, 19:29 GMT I find no problem with "vocabulary word." Insisting people never say "vocabulary word" seems somewhat pedantic. Gjones2 Sunday, June 12, 2005, 20:03 GMT I'm just guessing, but maybe the expression 'vocabulary words' (with its Latin Germanic combination) originated when education consisted mostly of learning Latin. At one time it may have been 'vocabularium words', the words from the Latin vocabulary list that have been assigned to be learned. I can understood, though, how the modern expression 'write down your vocabulary words' might seem unnecessarily _wordy_. :-) Usually just saying 'write down your words' would get the idea across (because the students have that as a routine task and know which words are intended). 'Vocabulary words' makes that understanding explicit by referring to the words on the list. 'Writing down your words' alone could mean any kind of words (e.g., the words you have to say in the class play or -- in the context of a court -- the transcript of your trial). 'Writing down your vocabulary' typically means the words you need to learn, but it could mean the words that are characteristic of your speech and writing. In any case 'vocabulary words' seems to be firmly established, so if you're going to resist it, your work is cut out for you. A Google search shows it on 392,000 pages, many of them on educational sites. |
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| Why don't English teachers know better than to use the phrase ''vocabulary words'' which makes no sense? |