Q: If they say "short" for both height and length why is it that a great height is "tall" and a great length is "long"?
A: "long" and "tall" are different concepts, so i'm not surprised that we have 2 words. i find it more interesting to wonder why we have only 1 word for small height and small length. Some other languages, however, have different words for small height and small length, but only 1 word for long and tall. i guess the takeaway here is, there's never gonna be infinite words, so some sharing will have to happen. and, like cloud shapes, each language will have a different configuration of such sharing