wordscape
English edit
Etymology edit
Noun edit
wordscape (plural wordscapes)
- A landscape constructed from words or language; a word collage.
- Coordinate term: word cloud
- (by extension, figurative) The whole lexicon (word-stock) of a language conceived as such a landscape or collage.
- 1987, David Justice, The Semantics of Form in Arabic in the Mirror of European Languages (Studies in Language)[1], volume 15, John Benjamins Publishing, →ISBN, page 188:
- […] we wonder whether the phrase might not be some mis-translation or a misprint […] , but no matter, the phrase as is has a certain ring to it and bids fair to be a part of our wordscape for the foreseeable future. So we accept the reality of the notion and imagine that perhaps, like leprechauns, it survives only in Ireland.
- 2007, Stephen Bowkett, 100+ Ideas for Teaching Creativity[2], Bloomsbury Academic, →ISBN, page 24:
- […] influence our perceptions increasingly as we grow. In one sense we are very much what we say, and how we interpret what is said to us. The world of words that mirrors the world of our experience is our wordscape. Passively accepting the wordscape at any point leads to a 'hardening of the categories', a freezing of the metaphors through which our experience is filtered. Constantly engaging and playing with language and […]
- 2015, Jennifer Speake, “Editor's Preface”, in Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, 6th edition, Oxford University Press, →ISBN:
- […] all, however, have won their place in the book by passing into wider currency and exhibiting the staying power and the tendency to spawn byforms and allusions that suggest that they are and will remain part of the English-language wordscape.