Re: Les ratés du KARCHER

no such word as cut, its meaning being sufficiently
covered by the noun-verb knife. Adjectives were formed by adding the suffix
-ful to the noun-verb, and adverbs by adding -wise. Thus for example,
speedful meant 'rapid' and speedwise meant 'quickly'. Certain of our
present-day adjectives, such as good, strong, big, black, soft, were
retained, but their total number was very small. There was little need for
them, since almost any adjectival meaning could be arrived at by adding -
ful to a noun-verb. None of the now-existing adverbs was retained, except
for a very few already ending in -wise: the -wise termination was
invariable. The word well, for example, was replaced by goodwise.
In addition, any word -- this again applied in principle to every word
in the language -- could be negatived by adding the affix un-, or could be
strengthened by the affix plus-, or, for still greater emphasis,
doubleplus-. Thus, for example, uncold meant 'warm', while pluscold and
doublepluscold meant, respectively, 'very cold' and 'superlatively cold'.
It was also possible, as in present-day English, to modify the meaning of
almost any word by prepositional affixes such as ante-, post-, up-, down-,
etc. By such methods it was found possible to bring about an enormous
diminution of vocabulary. Given, for instance, the word good, there was no
need for such a word as bad, since the required meaning was equally well --
indeed, better -- expressed by ungood. All that was necessary, in any case
where two words formed a natural pair of opposites, was to decide which of
them to suppress. Dark, for example, could be replaced by unlight, or light
by undark, according to preferen


.

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