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polyglot love

polyglot

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Speaking, writing, written in, or composed of several languages.
  • noun A person having a speaking, reading, or writing knowledge of several languages.
  • noun A book, especially a Bible, containing several versions of the same text in different languages.
  • noun A mixture or confusion of languages.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Using or containing many languages; many-languaged: as, a polyglot lexicon or Bible.
  • noun A book containing in parallel columns versions of the same text in several different languages.
  • noun One who understands or uses many languages.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Containing, or made up, of, several languages.
  • adjective Versed in, or speaking, many languages.
  • noun rare One who speaks several languages.
  • noun A book containing several versions of the same text, or containing the same subject matter in several languages; esp., the Scriptures in several languages.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Versed in, or speaking, many languages.
  • adjective Containing, or made up of, several languages.
  • adjective Comprising various linguistic groups
  • noun One who masters, notably speaks, several languages.
  • noun A publication containing several versions of the same text, or the same subject matter in several languages; especially, the Bible in several languages.
  • noun A mixture of langages and/or nomenclatures
  • noun programming A program written in multiple programming languages.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective having a command of or composed in many languages
  • noun a person who speaks more than one language

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French polyglotte, from Greek poluglōttos : polu-, poly- + glōtta, tongue, language.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek πολύγλωττος (poluglōttos, "many-tongued, polyglot"), from πολύς (polus, "many") + γλῶττα (glōtta, "tongue, language") (Attic variant of γλῶσσα (glōssa)).

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Examples

  • By the way, the term polyglot from its Greek roots literally means many tongues.

    Planet Python 2009

  • Cal Galbraith crossed over with great strides, angrily, and spoke to Madeline in polyglot Chinook.

    The Wife of a King 2010

  • Cal Galbraith crossed over with great strides, angrily, and spoke to Madeline in polyglot Chinook.

    The Wife of a King 2010

  • A polyglot is a speaker of two or more languages, and a hyperglot a speaker of six or more.

    Web Translations » Blog Archive » Language learning: how much is too much? 2008

  • Later he speaks to her in polyglot Chinook and insists she come home with him.

    “There be things greater than our wisdom, beyond our justice.” 2008

  • Joyce, living through the next decade in polyglot Trieste, finished the Portrait and began Ulysses in 1914.

    James Joyce 1946

  • Cal Galbraith crossed over with great strides, angrily, and spoke to Madeline in polyglot Chinook.

    The Wife of the King 1900

  • The energy keeps rising as the music does, as if there might be no other place in the world worth being at than this fashion party in the Centro Histórico of Mexico City with hundreds of familiar strangers—some Mexican, some British, some American, some a mixture of Mexican, and others of Latin American polyglot heritage.

    Down and Delirious in Mexico City Daniel Hernandez 2011

  • The energy keeps rising as the music does, as if there might be no other place in the world worth being at than this fashion party in the Centro Histórico of Mexico City with hundreds of familiar strangers—some Mexican, some British, some American, some a mixture of Mexican, and others of Latin American polyglot heritage.

    Down and Delirious in Mexico City Daniel Hernandez 2011

  • The energy keeps rising as the music does, as if there might be no other place in the world worth being at than this fashion party in the Centro Histórico of Mexico City with hundreds of familiar strangers—some Mexican, some British, some American, some a mixture of Mexican, and others of Latin American polyglot heritage.

    Down and Delirious in Mexico City Daniel Hernandez 2011

Comments

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  • chained_bear commented on the word polyglot

    "The sixteen months that it took to measure the length of a degree along a polar meridian hardly compares with the six years those who went to the equator spent in the Andes, but it was no picnic either. Maupertuis's team had to ferry themselves and their equipment up and down mountains and by way of rivers whose cataracts forced them into lengthy portages. Like the La Condamine party, Maupertuis's also relied on the labor of the local people, in this case a contingent of Finnish peasants in the Swedish army. Testimony to the polyglot world of eighteenth-century Europe, the group even included a translator who spoke Finnish, Latin, Swedish, and French."

    --Joyce Appleby, Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013), p. 166

    This may sound amazing only to a 21st-century American...

    December 28, 2016

  • Logophile77 commented on the word polyglot

    I wish to become one, one day.

    January 10, 2018