I think axiom should fit, but according to its official definition, an axiom is a statement that is taken to be true, and as far as I know, a word can’t make an statement by its own.
Thank you, kind person. This is exactly the appropriate response!
Axiomatic is pretty good. Irreducible is another. However, I would argue there are no undescribable words. If that were true, no one could learn certain words in other languages
I wonder if anyone has ever said something was indescribable, it was just because they weren’t aware of the word needed to describe it.
Even in a way, saying something was indescribable is doing a lot of heavy lifting by itself, which is weird.
What about words like “happiness” or “love”?
There are many, MANY words that do not have a 1 to 1 relationship between languages. Love is actually one of the more basic concepts most all languages have a word for.
The areas languages gets really interesting are in the idioms. THOSE are the expressions that generally take many words to explain.
Which is why if you want to write easily translatable text, never use idioms.
German is a great example of having words that mean a whole phrase in English, Schadenfreude (humor at someone’s expense) for one
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Fundamental is the term used to describe concepts like points in geometry. This seems like an analogous case, so I suggest it for your use here.
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The definition of crack in that instance would be something along the lines of: “The snapping sound the air makes when creating a small sonic boom. Like that of a whip cutting through the air.”
Even onomatopoeia has synonyms. Like some people say Atchoo. Some say kerchew. And then other languages say other words for the same sound.
Maybe not exactly what you’re looking for, but you could be interested in “circular definition”.
That shouldn’t be the case. Where that breaks down in more formal contexts is circular definitions. You don’t want to define one word using others that simply reference the defined word in their own definition. All words can be defined using the other available words. At some point it would become circular, but that’s of no consequence in the scope of all words.
All words all symbolic of their referents, but the symbolism is usually arbitrary. So I don’t think there are actually any words like that.
What a great question!!
