Abstract words with latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes - examples of the Ni tempus function
I met a guy who I typed as IEI, while I was out taking a walk, and we talked for a few minutes. I wish I had been able to record the conversation. But anyway, he used the word 'refinement' at one point in our discussion, to describe spiritual improvement of the self. You are being refined and perfected over time, purified, made more clear, made more yourself.
The word 'refinement' struck me as interesting. I've heard Ni types use these sorts of words before. I wanted to mention a couple of different words that seem like abstract process-related words and water metaphors that I've encountered. They describe intangible processes instead of concrete things. The 'water metaphor' that I personally encountered was somebody using the word 'confluence,' to 'flow together,' to describe how a series of events and people had somehow merged together in time.
Etymology helps me understand these words. They are almost meaningless to me, and almost impossible for me to remember, but yet, other people somehow use and remember them.
The words are often complex words with many parts, such as prefixes and suffixes. On the 'vocabulary building' page that I linked to below (the second link), they even said that in formal papers, people use the word 'judgment' instead of 'judge,' 'development' rather than 'develop,' etc. Those are processes that occur over time. Anything ending with -ment is sort of a process. So instead of saying 'He judged them,' they would say 'His judgment of them' or something. It de-emphasizes taking action (verb) and it emphasizes watches a process occurring as though you are separate from it, as a noun (the 'judgment' was a process that happened). This seems similar to Ni.
Whenever people use a lot of these kinds of words, I often become disoriented and I have to say 'Wait... what?' and then get a dictionary. But actually it's helpful to know these words. They emphasize processes occurring over time, and if that is what you want to express, then it helps to have exactly the right word to do it.
I wrote down some examples I thought of, but I don't feel like digging around through this mess to find the piece of paper. I'm going to keep paying attention to this and I want to add a couple examples here when I encounter them. Basically, anything ending with -ment, anything having these prefixes and suffixes and the Greek or Latin roots.
http://www.etymonline.com/
http://www.uefap.com/vocab/build/building.htm
http://www.phonicsontheweb.com/prefixes-suffixes.php
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Originally Posted by Jadae
