Vocab

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heidict entry

Vocab — /ˈvoʊ.kæb/ · noun · sentiment: neutral.

Inflections

Form	Value
countability	mass (usually); occasionally count

Definitions

(informal) — Vocabulary. Clipping of the full word, deployed when the full form feels stiff or schoolroom — "her vocab is wild", "we need to expand the clanker vocab". Often names the collective lexicon of a group or subculture (en_{heidict} vocab, grindset vocab, kubernetes vocab) rather than any one person's word- stock; the framing is register-collective, not individual.
- his vocab is unhinged
- the whole clanker vocab is basically borrowed from unix
- kids these days got a different vocab
- grindset vocab is like 60% lock in and 40% cooked'

Etymology

vocab: English clipping of vocabulary (from Latin vocabulum, "a name; that by which a thing is called", via medieval Latin vocabularius). Clipping is at least 19th-century schoolroom slang; the register-collective sense (naming a subculture's shared lexicon) is 2020s ambient.

Standard clipping shape — trims to the stressed syllable plus one, drops the tail. Same pattern as dict (dictionary), info (information), demo (demonstration), lab (laboratory).

Usage

Distinguish from dict: vocab is the set of words, dict is the reference-work that catalogues them (or the data structure that maps them). You expand your vocab by reading the dict; you add a lemma to the dict, and that expands the vocab available to speakers of en_{heidict}.

Sources

Canonical entry: heidict — Vocab
Source of truth (YAML): ~/ht/heidict/entries/vocab.yaml
Curated by Benedict under heidict editorial doctrine.