0

It's included the Merriam-Webster dictionary. I'm just curious if it is acknowledged as a proper form of "prayer."

Matt E. Эллен
  • 29,137
Guest
  • 19
  • 1
    "Prayerlike" means "resembling a prayer". It's not a form of prayer. And, yes, it's a perfectly valid word. – Hot Licks Sep 28 '15 at 03:34
  • @HotLicks the question asks «form of "prayer"», not «form of prayer». – hobbs Sep 28 '15 at 05:56
  • 1
    related: what does the phrase “a real word” mean? – Mari-Lou A Sep 28 '15 at 10:08
  • @hobbs - OK, if Opie is asking whether it's a "form" of the word "prayer" (like "going" is a form of the word "go"), no. It is a compound word, formed of the two words "prayer" and "like". "Like" can be fairly freely appended to nouns (eg, "humanlike") to form adjectives meaning "resembling a " (though there is often an argument as to whether a hyphen should be inserted). – Hot Licks Sep 28 '15 at 11:39
  • Acknowledged by whom? What is a proper form? What is a "prayer" in quotation marks? The question is unclear. Edit it to clarify what it is you are after. – RegDwigнt Sep 28 '15 at 12:19

1 Answers1

1

English, unlike other languages does not have a central authority on what is and what isn't valid. Since it lacks this, we can use two criteria to determine if it is a word: whether major dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster or Oxford list it, and whether people use it. Merriam-Webster is the only dictionary that lists it as a word. As for whether it is a real word, we can check how frequently it's used. According to Google Ngrams, prayerlike and prayer-like are currently used at roughly the same frequency. Since it is used as frequently as an alternative form and listed by a major dictionary, we can conclude that prayerlike is a word.

Ryan Polley
  • 131
  • 4
    OED doesn't list it because -like is a productive suffix and if it included all words ending in -like it would would be even huger than it is already. Antlike, benchlike, catlike, doglike... – Andrew Leach Sep 28 '15 at 06:21