1st Lexember Word

bale /bale̞/, noun: “salt water, seawater, brine, non-drinkable water”

I know, it’s bad, but try finding brine memes!

Anyway, as promised, here is the first Lexember word for Moten. Yeah! :) And as promised, it’s an everyday word (for some value of “everyday” :P).

Bale is an underived stem that refers to salt water (also called “brine”), sea water, and by extension any kind of non-drinkable water. If you’re wondering whether salt water actually deserves an underived stem, you have to realise that Moten already has unrelated words for liquid water at various temperatures (vone means “cold water”, zuba is “warm water”, while den is “hot water”). So having an unrelated word for water that is unsuited for human consumption (mostly because of salt contents, but possibly because of other reasons) doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

And if you’re wondering whether bale really qualifies as an “everyday” word, let’s just say that I needed it for tomorrow’s word, which should really qualify for that distinction. I hope you’re looking forward to it! :)

Questions?

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