The Rice University Neologisms Database

without words The word ‘averbal’ was created through affixation. The prefix a- meaning 'not, without' was combined to verbal to mean without words. It is unclear why the speaker chose to say averbal instead of the common nonverbal, which also means without words. It might have been a mistake; she knew that the prefix a- meant without, so she decided to put it in front of verbal to mean ‘without words’. Because there are several prefixes that mean 'not' or 'without', it seems acceptable to interchange them. However, nonverbal is most widely used to describe without words. The interchanging of prefixes that mean the same thing is not common because one is chosen and accepted by society when combined with a certain word. However, for people learning the language and taking a course like Linguistics where they learn different morphemes, averbal would not cause confusion. For native English speakers, averbal is immediately caught and corrected. The meaning that is wanted is given by averbal. The only difference is that it isn’t the most common word to use.