Lines Matching refs:shorter
1352 "Germanic words (generally words of Old English or to a lesser extent Norse origin) which include all the basics such as pronouns (I, my, you, it) and conjunctions (and, or, but) tend to be shorter than the Latinate words of English, and more common in ordinary speech. The longer Latinate words are often regarded as more elegant or educated. However, the excessive or superfluous use of Latinate words is considered at times to be either pretentious (as in the stereotypical policeman's talk of \"apprehending the suspect\") or an attempt to obfuscate an issue. George Orwell's essay \"Politics and the English Language\" is critical of this, as well as other perceived abuses of the language.\n" +
1386 "A computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd ed.) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973)[34] that estimated the origin of English words as follows:\n" +
