Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Linguistics Occurring without an article. Used especially of Greek nouns.
- adj. Zoology Lacking joints.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In zoöl.:
- Without joints; not jointed; inarticulated.
- Having no articulated limbs; anarthropodous.
- In grammar, without the article: applied especially to Greek nouns so used exceptionally.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Used without the article.
- adj. Without joints, or having the joints indistinct, as some insects.
Etymologies
- From Greek anarthros, not articulated : an-, without; see a-1 + arthron, joint; see ar- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“Basically, it appears that compound nouns that start with Oxford University can be arthrous (introduced by the article the, as discussed at length by Arnold Zwicky), but Oxford University itself is anarthrous (not introduced by an article).”
“You noticed my own careless deployment of anarthrous occupational nominal premodifiers?”
“In v. 5 Daniel claims God to be ton zōnta theon, but Cyrus claims for Bel to be only zōn theos; in v. 24 Cyrus makes the same claim for the Dragon, and then in v. 25 Daniel makes only a like claim for God (anarthrous), for”
“The anarthrous refers to a word or group of words that appear without a definite article.”
“These are the same words used in 1 Thessalonians 5: 1, but here they are in the anarthrous form while they are not in Paul's letter.”
“That version can't be used predicatively: "This is big deal" might be the boast of a Russian who never mastered the English determiner system, but it's not something that a native speaker would say "to express contempt for something regarded as impressive by another person". idiomatic contempt aside, the anarthrous exclamatory fragment "big deal" is syntactically regular, in that there are lots of other adjective+noun combinations used in a similar way.”
“The anarthrous exclamatory fragments are contrained in ways that are not entirely clear to me.”
“Careful translators recognize that the articular construction of the noun points to an identity, a personality, whereas a singular anarthrous predicate noun preceding the verb points to a quality about someone.”
“wow, this soup is really salty!", but the anarthrous exclamative "salty soup!" doesn't seem to me to work.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘anarthrous’.
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Word Words
This used to be my nym list, but there are so many words about words, I think it's time to expand and open.
acronym, antonym, aptronym, autoantonym, autonym, bacronym, capitonym, contranym, contronym, eponym, exonym, heteronym and 120 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 1051 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
fbharjo anarthrous unjointed: without an article in Greek Jan 22, 2007