[ithkuil]

> Humans think in words, not letters.

That's true. Just a nitpick: it's not about letters, it's about things that make up a word, and many words in natural languages are made up of smaller parts that have meaning.

But people do tend to forget them and just use the resulting word as a unit

Can't think of a good example in English but in Italian the word "alarm" is "allarme" which comes from "alle armi !" (to the weapons!). At some point people used that word to mean you should grab your weapons and then later they just meant it metaphorically. Most people today don't even make the connection between these two words despite it being right in the face.

What would be an equivalent example in English?