On: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age

[Radim]

The link between a word's length and its "usefulness" is fascinating too. The shorter the word, the more central, fundamental and frequent its use, as a rule of thumb. [0]

One glaring exception is "conscientiousness" -- a personality trait that has been the nr. 1 performance predictor in jobs that require results (execution as opposed to ideas), across time and industries. Clearly central, but 17 characters! O_o

[0] Strauss, Grzybek, Altmann: Word Length and Word Frequency https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-4068-...

[tempodox → Radim]

“conscientiousness” is quite young (stolen from Latin, i.e. when the Romans conquered the world). If it was significant before, it might have been shorter.

[TheCoreh → Radim]

So basically words organically developed Huffman coding?

[mcbits → Radim]

Not perfect synonyms, but we do have shorter words in the same semantic ballpark: virtue, vigor, zeal, concern, care, pains...

[Radim → mcbits]

I'd say the first three are completely off; "concern" & "care" better (I also heard "grit"), but not quite there.

[throwanem → Radim]

"Grit" is more like an unwillingness to surrender to adversity.

"Care" I think is the closest monosyllabic equivalent. Diligence and attention to detail are specifically exhorted by "take care", and caution by "use care". Conversely, one may disclaim them all with "I don't care".

It's a short word and probably an old one, so it's heavily freighted with denotations and connotations alike, and finds much use outside this context. But if you want to say "conscientiousness" in fewer than five syllables - which is a sensible thing to want - then I think "care" must be the most accurate word with which to do so.

[coldtea → Radim]

>One glaring exception is "conscientiousness" -- a personality trait that has been the nr. 1 performance predictor in jobs that require results (execution as opposed to ideas), across time and industries. Clearly central, but 17 characters!

Central here should be read as "important and used frequently everyday" (which conscientiousness is not at all), not central as in "the notion identified by the word is important in some domain" (besides conscientiousness does not even qualify that much even for this latter criterion).