{"id":239467,"date":"2026-06-23T02:18:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T07:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/how-languages-recycle-parts-of-words-to-avoid-confusion"},"modified":"2026-06-23T02:18:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T07:18:22","slug":"how-languages-recycle-parts-of-words-to-avoid-confusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/how-languages-recycle-parts-of-words-to-avoid-confusion","title":{"rendered":"How languages recycle parts of words to avoid confusion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-languages-recycle-parts-of-words-to-avoid-confusion.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Many languages recycle words, giving them different meanings. For example, in English, \u201crun\u201d can mean to move quickly but also to manage something, like \u201crun a company.\u201d In Spanish, \u201clengua\u201d is both the word for tongue and language, as in \u201cla lengua espa\u00f1ola.\u201d This type of word reuse is known as colexification.<\/p>\n<p>But there is another type of recycling, and that is partial colexification, where languages reuse only parts of words. A good example is the word \u201cgrand,\u201d which is shared in \u201cgrandfather\u201d and \u201cgrandmother.\u201d Until now, very little was known about the rules, patterns and how widespread this type of recycling is across different languages.<\/p>\n<p>A new study <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41562-026-02488-3\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal <i>Nature Human Behaviour<\/i> explores how different languages systematically reuse these smaller word parts while balancing efficiency with the need to keep meanings distinct. Barend Beekhuizen at the Department of Language Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga in Canada has published a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41562-026-02493-6\" target=\"_blank\">News &amp; Views<\/a> piece on the research in the same journal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many languages recycle words, giving them different meanings. For example, in English, \u201crun\u201d can mean to move quickly but also to manage something, like \u201crun a company.\u201d In Spanish, \u201clengua\u201d is both the word for tongue and language, as in \u201cla lengua espa\u00f1ola.\u201d This type of word reuse is known as colexification. But there is [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}