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2 The Creation of Technical- 
Scientific Words and Ex- 
pressions 
Whenever a machine is deviced or a novel technique 
or method is developed, when scientists discover yet 
another unknown phenomenon, it. must. be given a 
name and it is the privilege and the responsibility 
of the scientist or technician to coin the appropriate 
term. Rarely. if ever, he invents a completely 
new word: he reaches back to his old friendly 
linguistic background, to lexical items he is familiar 
with, and he manipulates them resorting to various 
mechanisms. 
a. He uses Latin or Greek elements (morphemes) 
or words to form compounds, adding appropriate 
endings: 
PHOTO-GRAM-METR-IC (English ending which 
marks an adjective) 
PHOTO-GRAM-METR-ISCH (German ending 
which marks an adjective) 
PHOTO-GRAM-(M)ÉTR-ICO (Spanisch ending 
which marks an adjective) 
PHOTO-GRAM-METR-IQUE (French ending which 
marks an adjective) 
PHOTO-GRAM-(M)ETR-IA (Spanish ending which 
marks a noun and denotes a discipline) 
b. He uses Latin or Greek morphemes or words and 
adds them to words in his own language: 
PHOTO-APPARAT (German) 
HALB-QUANTITATIV (German) 
SEMI-ONDA (Spanish) 
INFRA-RED (English) 
INFRA-ROUGE (French) 
INFRA-VERMELHO (Portuguese) 
c. He uses foreign words and combines them with 
words in his own language: 
DESKTOP-OBERFLÂCHE (!) (English + German) 
RESEAUPLATTE (French + German) 
RESEAUSCANNER (French + English) 
IMPRESORA OFFSET (Spanish + English) 
d. He combines words in his own language: 
HARDWARE (English) 
AEROESPACIAL (Spanish) 
FERNERKUNDUNG (German) 
SENSOREAMENTO REMOTO (Portuguese) 
OCCUPATION DU SOL (French) 
e. Ile uses already existing technical words and 
transforms them to suit his needs: 
PIXEL ... MIXEL ... VOXEL 
HARDWARE .. SOFTWARE .. FIRMWARE 
COMPUTER ... TRANSPUTER 
  
f. He uses a ,string^ of words to describe as closely 
as possible his invention but, finding it too long, 
he shortens it using different methods and these 
abbreviated versions become words: 
Radio Detection and Ranging — R.A.D.A.R — radar 
Light Amplification by Simulated Emission of 
Radiation — laser 
Picture element — pixel 
Modulator-demodulator = Modem 
g. He coins acronyms and uses them as nouns 
GIS DTM 
SPOT GPS 
1/0 AP 
h. He combines acronyms and abbreviations with 
existing words: 
CCD cameras - radar emission 
IR pictures - pixel analysis 
GIS technology - laser printer 
I/O devices 
or in 
words | Process viat 
a 
words 
techn. words 
words 
Abbreviations 
Table 1 Different approaches in the creation of words. 
The letters correspond to the listing above 
And what happens once he ,emits“ these words? 
They begin a life of their own, unfolding their multiple 
semantic potentialities, all of them open, unexplored. 
At its infantile stage a word is used and abused. 
Sometimes different versions coexist: 
workstation - workingstation 
gray scale - tonal scale - step wedge 
It expands its meaning as the field it covers becomes 
wider; it is adopted by other disciplines and its 
meaning is transferred, assimilated or adapted. In 
summary: everybody feels free to bend it to whatever 
his neds may be. 
» LINGUISTIC, coined by Ferdinand de Saussure 
to be used in the context of human oral and 
written language, and ,SEMANTICS* has been 
adopted by image interpreters (INTERPRETER: 
person who gives an immediate translation of words 
spoken in another language - Oxford University 
Press Dictionary) referring to patterns and rules 
that govern the conveyance of meaning in digital 
photogrammetry. Thus, instead of creating a new 
word (in Medicine the concept is covered by the word 
SEMIOLOGY^") a new field of meaning has been 
added to the old one.