New words
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Today's SMBC starts this way:
The whole thing:
The Mouseover title: "Sadly, the patreon subscriber ideas were all better than mine."
The Aftercomic:
Update — Humorous (pseudo-)antonyms aside, my favorite example of the linguistic insights available from latinate morphology in English is the semantic drift evident in conscription, description, prescription, inscription, transcription, subscription, proscription, ascription, circumscription, …
There's also inception, deception, reception, conception, exception, …
jin defang said,
December 20, 2024 @ 8:50 am
clever, but IMHO if adopted would be a real exprovement in the English language.
Mark Liberman said,
December 20, 2024 @ 9:23 am
@jin defang:
But think of the opportunities for comprovement, deprovement, transprovement, disprovement, interprovement, and even reprovement…
Gregory Kusnick said,
December 20, 2024 @ 11:30 am
In his novel Diaspora, Greg Egan used introdus as the opposite of exodus to denote the mass uploading of human minds into virtual realities.
Philip Taylor said,
December 20, 2024 @ 11:54 am
"Incommunicate" was the first example to come to (my) mind …
KevinM said,
December 20, 2024 @ 12:14 pm
PTaylor: As it came to your mind, of course it was an inample.
J.W. Brewer said,
December 20, 2024 @ 12:15 pm
Latin "exodus" is a loanword from Greek ἔξοδος, and it is in fact reasonably common these days in English-language discussions of the Old Testament narrative to contrast the "Exodus" with the earlier "Eisodus," borrowed into English (I think perhaps w/o an intermediate trip through Latin?) from Greek είσοδος ("entrance"). It is a sad commentary on modern education that many people think they know matched antonym-pairs of Latin prepositions yet are ignorant of matched antonym-pairs of Greek prepositions that are also useful for unlocking the semantics of English vocabulary (including but not limited to learned coinages of recent centuries). The common error of "hyperdermic" for "hypodermic," for example, is powerful evidence that many/most Anglophones do not understand hyper- and hypo- to be antonyms, even if they can follow the distinction between their Latin cognates, i.e. understand super- to be an antonym of sub-.
Very quick googling picked up instances of this usage in OT discussion at least as far back as 1938, when Prof. H.H. Rowley of the University College of North Wales read a paper titled "The Eisodus and the Exodus" to the 20th Int'l Congress of Orientalists, held that year in Brussels. I expect that would be easy to antedate. EDITED TO ADD: Indeed, just before mouseclicking to post this I stumbled upon an instance of the full phrase "[a]t the time of the Eisodus of the children of Israel" from an 1854 "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography."
J.W. Brewer said,
December 20, 2024 @ 12:26 pm
I should probably have added for the benefit of anyone to whom the Greek compounds are not transparent that ἔξοδος is the out-road (or path or by slight extension journey or expedition or what have you) while its antonym είσοδος is the in[to]-road (or ditto). The "road" morpheme ὁδός pops up separately in English in e.g. "odometer."
Philip Taylor said,
December 20, 2024 @ 1:09 pm
The "road" morpheme ὁδός pops up separately in English in e.g. "odometer." — Ah, thank you, JWB, I was unaware of that etymology until now. However, for me at least, "hypo-" and "hyper-" as prefices are clearly distinguishable — if one errs in mis-reporting a case of hypoglycæmia as hyperglycæmia when dialling 111, one can receive potentially fatal advice as to the best course of first-aid treatment.
Chris Button said,
December 20, 2024 @ 1:23 pm
Or we could chop off "in" entirely in the same way that "inflammable" became "flammable".
Annie Gottlieb said,
December 20, 2024 @ 2:14 pm
Then there's obsolete positives, "obs pos" for short, such as "ert" and "chalant." I'm sure you've covered this.
Peter Taylor said,
December 20, 2024 @ 3:41 pm
With respect to ex- and eis-, the most salient one for is also in the area of theology: exegesis (drawing out the meaning of a text) vs eisegesis (reading the desired meaning into it).
Julian said,
December 20, 2024 @ 4:44 pm
Etymology – Odos – odometer:
Maybe also Odyssey, Odysseus?
[I've been reading the Odyssey for 50 years. This possible etymological connection first occurred to me one minute ago. With language, always learning something new. A bottomless treasury.]
Julian said,
December 20, 2024 @ 4:51 pm
My favourite example of semantic drift: "crescent".
Something growing ( Latin crescere) – the shape of the growing moon – a street of that shape – a slightly pretentious word for a street of almost any shape that's not straight. Like the "crescent" that I live in, which on plan looks more like a battered saucepan than a crescent.
Steve Morrison said,
December 20, 2024 @ 9:13 pm
That one always gets under my skin…
Yves Rehbein said,
December 21, 2024 @ 3:39 am
There is another level of weirdness approaching Latin through English from the German perspective. So an Un-fall is an accident or an incident but literally an un-cident or, following the flamable example, simply a cident. On the other hand, Zu-fall is an incidental coïncident, perhaps amounting to an accident but certainly not a de-cident – rather dou(bt)ful. Inserting the second in the first equation it occurs (!) to me that an incident is literally an onslaught or invasion, German Einfall, so wholesome, like totally.
Yves Rehbein said,
December 21, 2024 @ 3:48 am
Indeed, Wiktionary translates Einfall "inroad". So was Exodus like an excident or an incident? I don't even know any more.
Andreas Johansson said,
December 21, 2024 @ 5:49 am
Eisodus must have come directly from Greek, or have been coined in modern languages from Greek elements – the usual path through Latin would've given "isodus".
(The eis- form may have been preferred to avoid association with the iso- prefix, as in "isomorphic".)
Tom Dawkes said,
December 21, 2024 @ 9:28 am
@JB Brewer "The common error of "hyperdermic" for "hypodermic" is understandable if you speak a non-rhotic form of English — as I do — since they would merge as [haipə]. On a personal note, I am hypothyroid, not hyperthyroid, and if I mention this I am careful to say [haipou] and not [haipɜ]
Jason M said,
December 21, 2024 @ 9:37 am
mmm. crescent-shaped croissants…
As for hypo/hyper confusion leading to dermic misinfusions, those prefixes are firmly fixed in my brain but maybe because of my medical/science training? The only instance that has confused me is “hypocritical”. Never makes sense to me, especially in light of the exstance of “hypercritical” as antonym.
Ryan said,
December 21, 2024 @ 10:14 am
I think we can agree that calling the waning moon excrescent would be carrying things too far.
J.W. Brewer said,
December 21, 2024 @ 10:32 am
Obviously there are many Anglophones, although I think still a decided minority, who are sufficiently conversant with the technical jargon of the medical profession that the hyper/hypo distinction and its meaning are clear to them. And similar things may be true for those conversant with the technical jargon of other fields where a lot of the jargon is coined from Greek morphemes: for example, if I were more conversant with cell biology and the biochemistry of protein complexes than I actually am, I would be well aware of the contrast between exosome and eisosome. For hypodermic, there's the additional problem of there being no contrasting "hyperdermic," because an injection "over the skin" is either incoherent or not medically useful. By contrast the Latinate analogue to "hypodermic," viz. "subcutaneous," does contrastively pair with "supracutaneous" because it covers a wider scope of medical contexts than "hypodermic" does.
To Tom Dawkes' point, while non-rhoticism does blur the hypo-/hyper- distinction, I was thinking of speech errors by rhotic American speakers more than I was of spelling errors.
Andreas Johansson's observation about how is- versus eis- is a useful clue as to whether or not the word passed through Latin or was coined more recently in a modern language is a helpful one. The antonymic Greek preposition is /ek/ in its base form but comes out as /eks/ in various compound situations, typically when followed by a vowel. The latter is ex- in English orthography whether or not it has traveled through Latin but for the former the distinction between the Latinized ec- and the non-Latinized ek- may be a similar clue. Compare, um, ecstatic with ekphrastic. Although the latter also exists in the variant spelling ecphrastic …
Philip Taylor said,
December 21, 2024 @ 11:17 am
« The common error of "hyperdermic" for "hypodermic" is understandable if you speak a non-rhotic form of English — as I do — since they would merge as [haipə] ». There was a similar confusion on BBC Radio 4 recently in the context of Syria, where more than one announcer appeared to speak of "prescribed" organisations where he/she meant "proscribed", the first vowel being indistinguishable (to my ear) from schwa.
Rodger C said,
December 21, 2024 @ 1:20 pm
@Jason M: Saith Wiktionary,"The word hypocrite ultimately came into English from the Greek word hypokrites, which means “an actor” or “a stage player.” The Greek word itself is a compound noun: it’s made up of two Greek words that literally translate as “an interpreter from underneath.” That bizarre compound makes more sense when you know that the actors in ancient Greek theater wore large masks to mark which character they were playing, and so they interpreted the story from underneath their masks."
Jason M said,
December 21, 2024 @ 8:10 pm
@Rodger C: Thanks. Unless I have forgotten, I don’t think I never knew that, even though I use Wiktionary so routinely the window is permanently open in all my browsers.
@Philip Taylor and other non-rhotics: wouldn’t “hypo” always sound like “hyper” in every antonym pair, such that there would be confusion? It is fortunate there is no “hyperdermic”, but what of the potentially catastrophic miscommunication that could occur in the antonym pairing mentioned earlier wherein the Greek prefixes for abnormal blood sugar levels are used in a diagnosis?
Philip Taylor said,
December 22, 2024 @ 4:41 am
No risk of any confusion in my (non-rhotic) idolect, Jason, as far as I can see— /ˈhaɪp oʊ/ v. /haɪp ə/.
Peter Taylor said,
December 22, 2024 @ 2:33 pm
J.W. Brewer wrote:
but I don't find the argument convincing because it's the "hypodermic" doesn't inherently convey injection, however much it may be implicit. It may be as simple as the contrast to "hypodermic" being "topical" (applied on the skin in the area of interest).
chris said,
December 23, 2024 @ 1:05 am
If I say that there's no incuse for this kind of silliness, does that mean that I'm proclaiming it to be exincusable? Or is that an excorrect exference?
I am an inpert on these matters so I would value your exput, if it's sufficiently intravagant.
I'd say think of the explications, but that one's exnovative enough to be inciting. (Wait, that's also already a word, but not an antonym… Maybe this process is more inact than it looks.)
P.S. Notoriously, flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. But what about exflammable? Do you need a fire intinguisher to be excautious?
Ross Presser said,
December 23, 2024 @ 11:56 am
Your concluding lines brought to mind the brain-clouding rhyme from *The Stars My Destination* (discussed and copied from here
Eight, sir; seven, sir;
Six, sir; five, sir;
Four, sir; three, sir;
Two, sir; one!
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tension, apprehension,
And dissension have begun.