Is the Word Önem ‘Importance’ Derived During the Turkish Language Revolution a Coined Word?

Abstract

The primary purpose of the Turkish Language Revolution, which was initiated under the leadership of Atatürk in the 1930s, was to find equivalents for Arabic and Persian words in Turkish and to purify the Turkish language. As a result of this process, many new words were added to the Turkish vocabulary. This article focuses on the word önem “importance”, has been used in Turkish since 1935. This word, derived as a counterpart to the Arabic word ehemmiyet “importance”, has been entrenched in Turkish since its early derivation.At first glance, the word önem is semantically associated with ön “front”. Many researchers argue that önem is formed by adding the suffix +em to the word ön, that there is no +em suffix in Turkish that derives nouns from nouns and therefore önem is a coined word. The primary aim of this article is to demonstrate that the word önem was not derived from the noun ön and is not a coined word. The study first presents the opinions of other researchers and etymological dictionary authors about the word önem and then explains how the word entered Turkish and its morphological structure. It has been shown that the word önem was derived not from the noun ön but from the verb öne-, and this verb öne- is not a coined verb but appears in a Turkish-Arabic dictionary copied in 1804/1805.