10 examples of CULTISMOS and their meaning

Words have a history, generally if we go to the etymologies of them we will discover their origin and their deepest meaning. Additionally, today we continue to invent words with roots from ancient languages. We may take some ending or part from Greek or Latin to build a term. In this lesson from a Teacher we will see how this is put into practice with cultisms, their examples and meaning.

It has happened to you that you hear a strange word that sounds "cultured" or "intellectual". This may be because it is a cultism. For these are terms that are not commonly used and are closely linked to its etymology, which according to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language is defined as:

"Origin of words, reason for their existence, their meaning and their form".

Thus, cultisms are closely linked to their origin. They are often used in literature, poetry and academic spaces. However, there is also the exception to the rule, as there are also cultisms that are used more frequently.

Various cultisms are drawn directly from dead languages ​​such as

Latin or Greekor. They are also used to name new technologies or scientific concepts. As the author Ángel Luis Gallego indicates in his text Definitions of Cultism, Semicultism and Heritage Word, one of the main characteristics of cultism is that it occurred when Spanish was already consolidated as a language: “Cultism hardly modifies its Latin form to adapt to the orthographic and phonological conventions (…) it goes through all the transformations that the roots and morphemes underwent in the development of the language Romance".

This means that the word is taken in its Greco-Latin origin and it is modified in its writing and in its pronunciation so that it fits with the grammatical norms of Castilian. For example, the term legislator that comes from the Latin legilator.

Origins of cultism

Although this has been a phenomenon that occurs even today. Highlights the work of Luis de Gongora that through poetic language he introduced and rescued ancient terms to renew his verse. Within the literature of the Spanish Baroque, Gongora It is one of the main references of Culteranismo, a literary style characterized by the exaggerated use of cultisms, poetic forms that are difficult to understand and an expansion of vocabulary.

In a certain sense, it was this poetic trend with Luis Góngora that gave rise to a popularization of the use of cultism in the Spanish language.

As we pointed out at the beginning of this lesson from a Teacher, now that we have seen the meaning of cultisms, we will go on to highlight some examples.

There are cultisms that are characterized by maintaining the Latin ending "us" or "um", within them we find:

• Memorandum: to be remembered. It also refers to an official or protocol document.
• Album: book or notebook to draw, save photos, stamps, autograph, etc.
• Forum: meeting where current issues and common interest are discussed where the public can give their opinion.
• Lapsus: for lack of attention make a mistake.

Within science, the use of cultisms has served to mix the deep meaning of certain Greco-Latin words with new inventions:

• Astronaut from the Greek "astro" which means star and "nauta" which means navigator.
• Microscope from the Greek "micro", small, and "scopio", vision.
• Paleolithic from the Greek "paleo" which refers to ancient and "lithic", stone

On the other hand, the term "lodge" In Greek it means study, we find terms that would enter into cultism but that today are used frequently when mixing this term with other ancient roots:

• Psychology: study of the mental processes, the perceptions, the mental faculties and the behavior of the human being.
• Epistemology: branch of philosophy that analyzes, describes and studies human knowledge.
• biology: scientific discipline that studies the processes and structure of living beings.

As we saw throughout this article, despite the fact that all cultisms come from Greco-Latin roots, there are some of little use and some of common use. In this way, we could divide the use of cultism into two large groups:

1. Those that are used within poetry, philosophy or science to expand vocabulary, designate a new object, invention or description of some phenomenon. These can be both of little use as "epistemology" that is usually used in areas of a mostly academic nature or more commonly with terms such as "psychology".
2. On the other hand, there are those cultisms that have been introduced into our daily lives for its use. Here are words like "astronaut", "album" or "slip"

Definitely, cultisms are a sign that language has an organic character that carries a story. Even if new terms are invented, others are stopped or a new letter is constituted, every lexicon has a base and a past. For this reason, the old words will continue to serve us to build those of the future.