New words
« previous post | next post »
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.