Words that should exist but don't

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LLorgger

[Aozora]

My linguistics professor called these lexical gaps and I remember she gave an example of muddy snow, which is pretty common here in the winter but we don't have a word for it. "Snud" was suggested but making words up doesn't work unless everyone starts using it.

[Vedun]

Basic words for different smells, like there are blue, green and red for colours and sweet, savory and spicy for tastes. Infact this is an overwhelmingly common lexical gap and such words occur only in one or a couple of languages in Papua New Guinea.

Verbs for motion derived from the respective preposition, e.g. go through, go over, go out, go in between. Georgian has such verbs.

[Teango]

My linguistics professor called these lexical gaps and I remember she gave an example of muddy snow, which is pretty common here in the winter but we don't have a word for it. "Snud" was suggested but making words up doesn't work unless everyone starts using it.

How about snirt?

[dampingwire]

How about snirt?

For what it's worth, that already means "a snicker; a suppress laugh". Which is quite appropriate really, as that was my initial reaction to both the Wiktionary entry and the OED entry

[Tillumadoguenirurm]

Your topic made me think of this book, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_Liff.

"The book is a "dictionary of things that there aren't any words for yet". Rather than inventing new words, Adams and Lloyd picked a number of existing place-names and assigned interesting meanings to them"

[Bluepaint]

Basic words for different smells, like there are blue, green and red for colours and sweet, savory and spicy for tastes. Infact this is an overwhelmingly common lexical gap and such words occur only in one or a couple of languages in Papua New Guinea.

Verbs for motion derived from the respective preposition, e.g. go through, go over, go out, go in between. Georgian has such verbs.

There should be a word for people who are unusually sensitive to bad smells. I spent the last few hours in a group where one person had slightly bad breath. Whereas most people would carry on and not care much, to me it was nauseating. I'm not a fusspot, I just seem a little more sensitive to smells.

[Adrianslont]

Basic words for different smells, like there are blue, green and red for colours and sweet, savory and spicy for tastes. Infact this is an overwhelmingly common lexical gap and such words occur only in one or a couple of languages in Papua New Guinea.

Verbs for motion derived from the respective preposition, e.g. go through, go over, go out, go in between. Georgian has such verbs.

There should be a word for people who are unusually sensitive to bad smells. I spent the last few hours in a group where one person had slightly bad breath. Whereas most people would carry on and not care much, to me it was nauseating. I'm not a fusspot, I just seem a little more sensitive to smells.

Rhian, there is a word for people who are sensitive to odours: osmophobic.

Verdun, English has a number of words for motion plus preposition combos, too eg go into = enter or penetrate, go out = exit, go up = climb or scale or ascend and more.

Cheers.

[Teango]

Your topic made me think of this book, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_Liff.

Ditto! I was always quite fond of the entry "Abilene (adj.) Descriptive of the pleasing coolness on the reverse side of the pillow." (p. 2)

[Vedun]

Basic words for different smells, like there are blue, green and red for colours and sweet, savory and spicy for tastes. Infact this is an overwhelmingly common lexical gap and such words occur only in one or a couple of languages in Papua New Guinea.

Verbs for motion derived from the respective preposition, e.g. go through, go over, go out, go in between. Georgian has such verbs.

There should be a word for people who are unusually sensitive to bad smells. I spent the last few hours in a group where one person had slightly bad breath. Whereas most people would carry on and not care much, to me it was nauseating. I'm not a fusspot, I just seem a little more sensitive to smells.

Rhian, there is a word for people who are sensitive to odours: osmophobic.

Verdun, English has a number of words for motion plus preposition combos, too eg go into = enter or penetrate, go out = exit, go up = climb or scale or ascend and more.

Cheers.

They are not derived from the respective prepositions though, such verbs would be *throughen, *overen, *betweenen.