Zombie linguistic terms

This page is a list of zombie linguistic terms, i.e. terms linguists once used but no longer use, but have found an afterlife in the popular press. The page is the outcome of a discussion on the ZBB started by Geoff Eddy on March 14, 2011.

Phonetics and phonology

guttural - characterized by articulation in the back of the mouth, ranging from velar to glottal. Often misspelled gutteral.

phonetic (of languages) - written in a script that approaches a phonetic transcription.

strident - a poorly defined term which encompasses sibilants, affricates and whatever the author sees fit.

Language classification and historical linguistics

Aryan - a term that used to refer either to Indo-European, Indo-Iranian or some kind of racial phantasm.

Hamitic - a language family once believed to consist of Egyptian, Berber and Cushitic. All these languages are members of the Afro-Asiatic family (which is sometimes still called Hamito-Semitic), but no longer considered to form a valid node.

Indo-Germanic - an obsolete name for Indo-European.

Ural-Altaic - a language family once believed to consist of Uralic and Altaic. Altaic is now considered questionable.