The aim of this blog is to serve as a meeting point to those who study or have studied English philology and, more broadly, to all those who love literature and language.

22 Sept 2008

ENGLISH LANGUAGE ODDITIES III

I know some of you disagree with me but I do believe that English speaking world have an attitude towards its language more playful than ours, Spanish speakers. Take for example the expression ‘wordsmith’ that the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as “a person who works with words ; especially : a skillful writer”, and try to find the correspondent Spanish term - it doesn´t exist.
By the way, take a look to this site: http://wordsmith.org/ It´s nice!

4 comments:

  1. Thank you for the link and the word.

    I liked the ‘anagram’ tool on that website. It is curious to see the possibilities of letter rearrangement starting from a word.

    Regarding ‘wordsmith’ I had not heard that word before (or if I had, I had completely missed it) Answers.com gives these two entries: 1. A fluent and prolific writer, especially one who writes professionally. 2. An expert on words
    While browsing through the WWW in search of uses of that word I’ve come across this blog post http://sydspinnin.blogspot.com/2007/03/junior-cycling-club-needs-catchy-name.html where someone requests ideas for naming a cycling club and makes use of the second sense of the word, probably. There is also an expressive picture to highlight the meaning of ‘wordsmith’.

    I found nothing similar in Spanish. How could it be translated?

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  2. ¿Qué tal "Artífice de la palabra"?

    I´m back again and I hope to "appear" more often.

    Cheers!!

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  3. Wellcome back, Beatriz! Nice to read you again.
    I was going to propose 'palabrero', but it already exists! The dictionary of the RAE says: 1º Que habla mucho 2º Que ofrece fácilmente y sin reparo, no cumpliendo nada.
    'Palabrista' sounds better, but it is a synonym of the aforentioned term...
    Juan F.

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  4. Sorry, were you looking for ONE WORD?

    “Palabrista” sounds definitely better than “palabrero”. I have been thinking of a compound such as “moldeapalabras” but I have not found a convincing one. Anyway, I really liked the photograph of the wordsmith on the blog Maite mentioned and the expression: “Please help o witty wordsmiths”.

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