Wiktionary

bahuvrihi

See also:Bahuvrihi

English

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WOTD – 12 May 2017

Alternative forms

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Etymology

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TransliterationofSanskritबहुव्रीहि(bahuvrīhi,“rich, wealthy”,literally“(possessing) much rice”),itself an example of a bahuvrihi.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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bahuvrihi(pluralbahuvrihis)

Examples (type of nominal compound)
  • bluestocking— A scholarly, literary, or cultured woman
  • lowlife— An untrustworthy, despicable, or disreputable person.
  • redcoat— A British soldier during the American Revolution
  1. (grammar,alsoattributive)A type ofnominalcompoundin which the first partmodifiesthe second but neither part aloneconveysthe intendedmeaning.
    • 1825,[Svayambhuva Manu], “[Notes.]Chap. III.”, inGraves Chamney Haughton,editor,Mánava-Dherma-Sástra; or The Institutes of Menu,volume I (Sanscrit Text), London: Printed by Cox and Baylis,Great Queen Street,Lincoln's Inn Fields,→OCLC,page340:
      Considerable discrepancies prevail with regard to the word मूचिीः which the Calcutta edition and all the authorities except the Bombay copy and No. VI. read without thevisarga.It has subsequently been inserted in Mr.[Charles] Wilkins'ms.,and is clearly required by the sense, as तोजोमूचिीः is abahuvrihior compound epithet.
    • 1870June 8,Th[eodor] Goldstücker,“Appendix to Page 18”, inOn the Deficiencies in the Present Administration of Hindu Law; being a Paper Read at the Meeting of the East India Association on the 8th of June, 1870,London:Trübner and Co.,60,Paternoster Row,published1871,→OCLC,page 48, footnote †:
      The drift of thisparibâshâ,asPatañjaliexplains it, is to show thatBahuvrîhicompounds (in English comparable to adjective compounds like lightfoot—i.e.one who possesses light feet,—or blueeye-d, &c.) are of two kinds, the one expressing a quality or an attribute which is essential, and the other expressing a quality or an attribute which is not essential, to the subject so predicated by the compound. Thus, as Patañjali illustrates, if you say: 'there march the priests having red turbans on,' theBahuvrîhilohitoshńísháh'having red turbans on' implies here an essential quality of the priests, since this quality cannot be disconnected from their appearance as they march.
    • 1986,Alan J[effrey] Nussbaum,Head and Horn in Indo-European(Untersuchungen zur indogermanischen Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft[Studies in Indo-European Language and Culture],New Series; 2), Berlin:Walter de Gruyter,→ISBN,page273:
      It would therefore not be surprising if unambiguousbahuvrihimorphology were to be used occasionally in a governing compound.
    • 1997,Prague Studies in English(Acta Universitatis Carolinae, Philologica), volume XXII, Prague:Universita Karlova,→ISSN,→OCLC,page16:
      At the same time, none of the extended adjectivalbahuvrihishas its linear counterpart in either poem. This is characteristic of the general situation in Old English. Neither the correspondence between the linear and the reversedbahuvrihisnor the relation between the linear and the extendedbahuvrihisis symmetrical,[…]
    • 2006,Réka Benczes,Creative Compounding in English: The Semantics of Metaphorical and Metonymical Noun-Noun Combinations(Human Cognitive Processing;19), Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Pa.:John Benjamins Publishing Company,→ISBN,page19:
      The fourth subcategory of exocentric compounds are the infamousbahuvrihiconstructions, such ashunchback,paleface,scatterbrain.[Hans] Marchanddefines these as expressions which denote somebody (or something) which can be characterised by the feature expressed by the compound. Thus,bahuvrihicompounds have some kind of an identifying function. Marchand provides the following explanation for the origins ofbahuvrihicompounds: they were used very early in Indo-European languages, primarily for namegiving, but most of them functioned only as adjectives.

Translations

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See also

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Further reading

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