bahuvrihi
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A bahuvrīhi (), or bahuvrīhi compound, is a type of compound word that denotes a referent by specifying a certain characteristic or quality the referent possesses. A bahuvrihi is exocentric, so that the compound is not a hyponym of its head. For instance, a sabretooth (smil-odon) is neither a sabre nor a tooth, but a feline with sabre-like teeth.
Described at
Bahuvrihi compound - Glottopedia
glottopedia.org →In regular compounds such as bloedneus 'bloody nose' the word neus functions as the head , and bloed as the modifier which attributes a property to the head neus , viz. that it is bleeding. Bahuvrihi compounds like wijsneus 'wise guy' (lit. 'wise nose') or roodhuid 'redskin' (='Native American') are crucially different in this respect. A wijsneus is not a nose that is wise.
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Encyclopedic overview
6 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- Examples
- English
- Other languages
- See also
- References
A bahuvrīhi (), or bahuvrīhi compound, is a type of compound word that denotes a referent by specifying a certain characteristic or quality the referent possesses. A bahuvrihi is exocentric, so that the compound is not a hyponym of its head. For instance, a sabretooth (smil-odon) is neither a sabre nor a tooth, but a feline with sabre-like teeth.
In Sanskrit bahuvrihis, the last part is a noun—more strictly, a nominal stem—while the whole compound is an adjective. In Vedic Sanskrit the accent is regularly on the first member ( '''' "a king's son", but bahuvrihi ' "having kings as sons" (lit. king-sons), viz. ', m., "father of kings", ', f., "mother of kings"), with the exception of a number of non-nominal prefixes such as the privative a; the word ' is itself likewise an exception to this rule.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “bahuvrihi” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.