International Scientific Vocabulary - Definition and Overview

International Scientific Vocabulary (or ISV) is an annotation used in Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961) to indicate scientific words where the language of origin is not certain, but which are in current use in one or more languages other than English.

As Webster's Third explains, "some ISV words (like haploid) have been created by taking a word with a rather general and simple meaning from one of the languages of antiquity, usually Latin and Greek, and conferring upon it a very specific and complicated meaning for the purposes of modern scientific discourse." ISV words are typically a compound or a derivative which "gets only its raw materials, so to speak, from antiquity."

Example Usage of International