The most famous reformer of Estonian, Johannes Aavik (1880–1973), used creations ex nihilo (cf. ‘free constructions’, Tauli 1977), along with other sources of lexical enrichment such as derivations, compositions and loanwords (often from Finnish; cf. Saareste and Raun 1965: 76). In Aavik’s dictionary (1921), which lists approximately 4000 words, there are many words which were (allegedly) created ex nihilo, many of which are in common use today. Examples are
Of all of Estonian's language reformers who is the most well known? What was the period of time in which Johannes Aavik was alive? What is the technique Aavic used to create Estonian words out of nothing? In what publication can examples of ex nihilo words be found? How many words did Aavik put in his dictionary?