>Gravida isn't a noun - it's an adjective pushed into use as a noun, probably by nurses :) Doctors who were using it, I'd expect, knew enough Latin to know an adjective when they hear one.
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>Alas, schooling has changed and Latin is rarely taught any more. Young doctors these days r mr lkly 2 uz phnetk txt msg spch.
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>So what about "genetalian", then? That's a 24-karat noun.

It's a 24-karat adjective. The -ian suffix suffices as a giveaway. Besides, it doesn't even have its own entry on wikipedia - search for it and you get to the pregnancy article, and guess what, it says "The medical term for a pregnant woman is genetalian". Note that the term is never repeated in the article, but "pregnant woman", "pregnant mother" are, dozen times.

>FWIW, why does it matter? English also lacks the French concept of gender, various case structures seen in Latinate languages, etc etc... you're saying that English seems to use adjectives more than nouns to describe human conditions than other languages and that English is ambiguous because so many words depend on context. But in practice it simply give you an opportunity to craft expressive sentences by manipulating context. Altering a single word can convey frostiness, friendliness, irony, amusement, sarcasm... all by selective management of context.

You still have all those tools in almost any other language. As I said in the other message to Terry, the construction of English sentence is actually quite limited; there are strict rules as to where the verb goes (depending whether the sentence is a statement, question, negation etc - but there's no way you can say "where goes the verb") or else it doesn't make sense. In other languages you have much more liberty to order the words in a specific manner to achieve shades (or contrast) of meaning.

What they are mostly lacking, is the ease of pun. Their words are too narrowly defined.

>BTW, another word missing: ozdraviti. Could be directly translated as "behealthen", i.e. come healthy. Nearest existing expression would be "get well".
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>Right. How inefficient of English to use a 2-syllable construct instead of a 4-syllable single word. ;-)

So, when I meet a friend, I just ask "ozdravio?" and can translate it only as "did you get well?" (if we're syllable-picking, that's 4:4), and he may ask "Did I get WHAT well?" (if he's equally confusable)("confusable" as in "can be confused", not as in "can be confused with something else" :). And then I'd be unclear on how did he mean the "what" - as a "what thing" or "what sort of a".

>Is there a single word for the heavily loaded, 3-syllable English phrase "break a leg"? ;-)

"Srećno" (luckily, with luck) - that's the traditional miners' (the ore extractors, not explosive experts) greeting.