While a young student just beginning college, Isaac Newton worked on drawing up plans for a “universal” language. Under his carefully-designed language system, the names of similar or related things would all begin with the same letter For instance, all musical instruments would begin with the letter “M”. People would know what “category” a word fell into by its sound with the addition of suffixes and prefixes to fine-tune the meaning of the word. Newton used the example of “tor,” which in his language meant “temperature.” He then listed several variations of the word as examples.

utor, hot

owtor, exceeding hot

ǝwtor, very hot

awtor, pretty hot

ewtor, very little hot

iwtor, exceeding little hot

etor, warm

iytor, exceeding little cold

eytor, very little cold

aytor, indifferently cold

ǝytor, very cold

oytor, excessive cold

itor, cold

ator, neither very hot nor cold

ǝtor, pretty hot or pretty cold

otor, very hot or very cold

Under this ingenious system, a person could know exactly what a word meant just by hearing the word.

This idea of a universal language where the words expressed their meaning through an orderly formula was in the air in the 17th century, and Newton was no doubt aware of the efforts that others had already made toward this end. There had been various plans published for languages based on symbols, numbers, or letters. Newton’s plan was based on letters, and by varying the letters in a word, you could vary its meaning in a predictable way.

At some point, Newton probably figured out that development of a new language would require a lifetime’s worth of work. Instead, he decided to devote his time to other endeavors such as the discovery of gravity and the principles governing motion, light, and cooling.