Their widespread use makes technical writing generally accessible to readers who may only have a smattering of the language in which it appears.
German and Russian, for instance, have historically attempted to create their own technical vocabularies from native elements.
Usually, these creations are German and Russian calques on the international vocabulary, such as Wasserstoff and "водород" (vodoród) for hydrogen.
Like any exercise in language prescription, this endeavour has been only partially successful, so while official German may still speak of a Fernsprecher, public telephones will be labelled with the internationally recognized Telefon.
Neoclassical compounds frequently vary their stressed syllable when suffixes are added: ágriculture, agricúltural.
The Tudor period writer Sir John Cheke wrote: I am of this opinion that our own tung should be written cleane and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borrowing of other tunges; wherein if we take not heed by tiim, ever borowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt.and therefore rejected what he called "inkhorn terms".
Neoclassical compounds are sometimes used to lend grandeur or the impression of scientific rigour to humble pursuits: the study of cosmetology will not help anyone become an astronaut.
Compounds along these models are also sometimes coined for humorous effect, such as odontopodology, the science of putting your foot into your mouth.
Most neoclassical combining forms translate readily into everyday language, especially nouns: bio- as 'life' -graphy as 'writing, description'.
Prefixes include: aero- air, crypto- hidden, demo- people, geo- earth, odonto- tooth, ornitho- bird, thalasso- sea.
When a form stands alone as a present-day word, it is usually a telescopic abbreviation: bio biography, chemo chemotherapy, hydro hydroelectricity, metro metropolitan.
In appendices to dictionaries and grammar books, classical combining forms are often loosely referred to as roots or affixes: 'a logo …, properly speaking, is not a word at all but a prefix meaning word and short for logogram, a symbol, much as telly is short for television' (Montreal Gazette, 13 Apr.
Generally, classical compounds were a closed system from the 16th century to the earlier 20th century: the people who used them were classically educated, their teachers and exemplars generally took a purist's view on their use, contexts of use were mainly technical, and there was relatively little seepage into the language at large.
In technical, semitechnical, and quasitechnical usage at large, coiners of compounds increasingly treat Latin and Greek as one resource to produce such forms as accelerometer, aero-generator, bioprospector, communicology, electroconductive, futurology, mammography, micro-gravity, neoliberal, Scientology, servomechanism.
In the later 20th century, many forms have cut loose from ancient moorings: crypto- as in preposed Crypto-Fascist and pseudo- as in pseudoradical; postposed -meter in speedometer, clapometer.
Processes of analogy have created coinages like petrodollar, psycho-warfare, microwave on such models as petrochemical, psychology, microscope.
The same spoken usage may be written micro-missile, micro missile, micromissile, reflecting the same uncertainty or flexibility as in businessman, business-man, business man.
The coinage of new native terms on Chinese roots is most notable in Japanese, where it is referred to as wasei kango (和製漢語, Japanese-made Chinese-words).
For example, 自動車 (Japanese jidōsha, Korean jadongcha, Mandarin zìdòngchē) is a Japanese-coined word meaning "automobile", literally self-move-car; compare to auto (self) + mobile (moving).