Diction

Question 1

active

Answer 1

of an individual’s vocabulary, that part which is actually used.

Question 2

bowdlerise

Answer 2

to cut or replace with euphemisms anything thought ‘improper’ ; an eponym from Thomas Bowdler (1754–1825), editor of the Family Shakespeare
(1818).

Question 3

coinage

Answer 3

of a word, a neologism or nonce-word ; often used possessively, to
indicate the coiner. Implicitly, new words are ‘struck’ or ‘minted’ rather than ‘made’ or ‘invented’.

Question 4

creole

Answer 4

(from Spanish criollo, a slave born in slavery ; ultimately probably from Latin creare, to create) a noun and adjective for people, cultures, and languages of mixed European and/or African and/or Amerindian heritage ; of a language the word typically implies ‘formerly a pidgin tongue, now the sole or native language’. It is now sometimes spelled ‘kweyol’.

Question 5

decorum

Answer 5

(from Latin decorus, seemly) appropriateness, consistency, and civility of register, style, etc. in artistic compositions ; the opposite is indecorum.

Question 6

demotic

Answer 6

(Greek, ‘popular’) of a word, register, or style, of the common people, often with an implication of vulgarity.

Question 7

dialect

Answer 7

now usually a regional form of a dominant language, implying different words and/or syntax rather than simply accent.

Question 8

diction

Answer 8

the choice of words (including the reasons for and consequences of
that choice).

Question 9

discourse

Answer 9

here, the diction of a particular poem, the relations between the
words it actually uses. (A specialised use of an ambiguous and polysemic term.)

Question 10

etymology

Answer 10

the derivation and history of a particular word, or the general
study of how words evolve.

Question 11

Germanic

Answer 11

of languages, belonging to a particular group of Indo-European
languages, including modern German and Dutch, and Old English ; of modern English words, deriving from one of these languages.

Question 12

idiom

Answer 12

generally, a language or dialect, the tongue and expressions of an area or group ; most specifically, a turn of phrase etc. habitual to native speakers but whose meaning is not readily predictable from the meanings of constituent
words (go get ’em, tiger ; well I never).

Question 13

lexical set

Answer 13

any set of words specified by a given criterion.

Question 14

nation language

Answer 14

a politically correct term for Caribbean creoles and/or patois,
usually deployed with ideological purpose (and sometimes adopted in Black American poetics).

Question 15

neologism

Answer 15

a new word

Question 16

orthography

Answer 16

conventionally correct or proper spelling, and its study.

Question 17

passive

Answer 17

of an individual’s vocabulary, the whole range of words that is known.

Question 18

patois

Answer 18

(? from Old French patoier, to handle roughly) loosely, a dialect ;specifically, West Indian creoles drawing on English, French, or Spanish + African and/or Amerindian languages. It is now sometimes spelled ‘patwa’.

Question 19

polysemic

Answer 19

of words, having many senses and/or distinct meanings.

Question 20

portmanteau

Answer 20

a word created by merging two or more existing words.

Question 21

register

Answer 21

generally, the chosen level or pitch of style + diction + decorum in a
text, assessed as e.g. ‘high’ or ‘demotic’ ; in printing register refers to the exactitude of repositioning the paper when multiple impressions are needed (as for colour + B&W), or both sides of a leaf bear text.