Classical compound
Encyclopedia
Classical compounds are compound words composed from Latin
or Ancient Greek
root words
. A large portion of the technical
and scientific
lexicon
of English
and other Western Europe
an languages consists of classical compounds. For example, bio- combines with -graphy to form biography. A vowel usually facilitates the combination: in biography, the Greek thematic vowel -o-, in miniskirt, the Latin thematic -i-. This vowel is usually regarded as attached to the initial base (bio-, mini-) rather than the final base (-graphy, -skirt), but in Greek-derived forms it is sometimes shown as attached to the final base (-ography, -ology). If, however, the final base begins with a vowel (for example, -archy as in monarchy), the mediating vowel has traditionally been avoided (no *monoarchy), but in recent coinages it is often kept and generally accompanied by a hyphen (auto-analysis, bio-energy, hydro-electricity, not *autanalysis, *bienergy, *hydrelectricity).
s whose prestige is or was respected throughout the West European culture, these words typically appear in many different languages. Their widespread use makes technical writing
generally accessible to readers who may only have a smattering of the language in which it appears.
Not all Western European languages have been equally receptive to classical technical compounds. German
, for instance, has historically attempted to create its own technical vocabulary from native elements. Usually, these creations are German calques on the international vocabulary, such as Wasserstoff for hydrogen
. Like any exercise in language prescription, this endeavour has been only partially successful, so while official German may still speak of a Fernsprecher, public telephone
s will be labelled with the internationally recognized Telefon.
Thus, for example, Ancient Greek σφιγξ becomes English (and Latin) sphinx
. Exceptions to these romanizing rules occur, such as leukemia
(leukaemia); compare leukocyte, also leucocyte. In Latin, and in the target languages, the Greek vowels are given their classical values rather than their contemporary values in demotic Greek.
Ancient Greek words often contain consonant cluster
s which are foreign to the phonology
of contemporary English and other languages that incorporate these words into their lexicon: diphthong
; pneumatology
, phthisis. The traditional response in English is to treat the unfamiliar cluster as containing one or more silent letter
s and suppress their pronunciation, more modern speakers tend to try and pronounce the unusual cluster. This adds to the irregularities of English spelling; moreover, since many of these words are encountered in writing more often than they are heard spoken, it introduces uncertainty as to how to pronounce them when encountered.
Classical compounds frequently vary their stressed syllable when suffixes
are added: ágriculture
, agricúltural. This also gives rise to uncertainty when these words are encountered in print. Once a classical compound has been created and borrowed, it typically becomes the foundation of a whole series of related words: e.g. astrology
, astrological, astrologer/astrologist, astrologism.
first appeared in an English text in 1535. Other early adopted words that still survive include mystagogue
, from the 1540s, and androgyne, from the 1550s. The use of these technical terms predates the scientific method
; the several varieties of divination
all take their names from classical compounds, such as alectryomancy
, divination by the pecking of chicken
s.
Not all English writers have been friendly to the reception of classical vocabulary. The Tudor period writer Sir John Cheke
wrote:
and therefore rejected what he called "inkhorn term
s".
Similar sentiments moved the nineteenth century author William Barnes
to create "pure English," in which he sought to strip out all Ancient Greek and Latinisms and find Anglo-Saxon
equivalents therefor: for Barnes, the newly invented art of the photograph
became a sun-print. Unlike this one, some of Barnes's coinages caught on, such as foreword
, Barnes's replacement for the preface
of a book. Later, Poul Anderson
wrote a jocular piece called Uncleftish Beholding
in a constructed language
based on English which others have called Ander-Saxon; this attempted to create a pure English vocabulary for nuclear physics
.
, dinosaur
, rhinoceros
, and rhododendron
, are thoroughly incorporated into the English lexicon and are the ordinary words for their referents. Some are prone to colloquial
shortening; rhinoceros often becomes rhino, a situation which may give rise to ambiguity when someone moves from speaking of rhinoceroses to rhinovirus
es, being unclear whether the speaker is talking about a Rhino virus, or a Rhinovirus. The binomial nomenclature
of taxonomy
and biology
is a major source for these items of vocabulary; for many unfamiliar species that lack a common English name, the name of the genus
becomes the English word for that life form.
In the metric system
, prefixes that indicate multiplier
s are typically Greek in origin, such as kilogram, while those that indicate divisor
s are Latin, as in millimeter: the base roots resemble Greek words, but in truth are neologisms. These metric and other suffixes are added to native English roots as well, resulting in creations such as gigabyte
. Words of mixed Latin and Greek lineage, or words that combine elements of the classical languages with English – so-called hybrid word
s – were formerly castigated as "barbarism
s" by prescriptionist usage commentators; this disapproval has mostly abated. Indeed, in scientific nomenclature, even more exotic hybrids have appeared, such as for example the dinosaur Yangchuanosaurus
. Personal name
s appear in some scientific names such as Fuchsia
.
Classical compounds are sometimes used to lend grandeur or the impression of scientific rigour to humble pursuits: the study of cosmetology
will not help anyone become an astronaut
. Compounds along these models are also sometimes coined for humorous effect, such as odontopodology, the science of putting your foot into your mouth. These humorous coinages sometimes take on a life of their own, such as garbology
, the study of garbage
.
Some classical compounds form classical plurals, and are therefore irregular in English. Others do not, while some vacillate between classical and regular plurals.
Some are also free words, such as mania in dipsomania and phobia in claustrophobia.
Some are composites of other elements, such as encephalo- brain, from en- in, -cephal- head, and -ectomy cutting out, from ec- out, -tom- cut, -y, a noun-forming suffix that means "process of".
until the mid-20th century, the concept of derivational purity has generally regulated the use of classical compounds: Greek with Greek, Latin with Latin, and a minimum of hybridization. Biography is Greek, agriculture Latin, but television is a hybrid of Greek tele- and Latin -vision (probably so coined because the ‘pure’ form telescope had already been adopted for another purpose). Most dictionaries follow the OED in using combining form (comb. form) to label such classical elements, but the name is not widely known. In appendices to dictionaries and grammar books, classical compounds are often loosely referred to as roots or affixes: ‘a logo …, properly speaking, is not a word at all but a prefix meaning word and short for logogram, a symbol, much as telly is short for television’ (Montreal Gazette, 13 Apr. 1981). They are often referred to as affixes because some come first and some come last, but if they were affixes, a word like biography would have no base whatever. While affixes are grammatical (like prepositions), classical compounds are lexical
(like nouns, adjectives, and verbs): for example, bio- translates as a noun (life), -graphy as a verbal noun (writing). They are also often loosely called roots because they are ancient and have a basic role in word formation, but functionally and often structurally they are distinct from roots: the -graph in autograph is both a root and a classical compound, while the -graphy in cryptography consists of root -graph- and suffix -y, and is only a classical compound.
The coinage of new native terms on Chinese roots is most notable in Japanese, where it is referred to as . Many of these have been subsequently borrowed into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese, with the same (or corresponding) characters being pronounced differently according to language, just as happens in European languages – compare English biology and French biologie.
For example, 自動車 (Japanese jidōsha, Korean jadongcha) is a Japanese-coined word meaning “automobile”, literally self-move-car; compare to auto (self) + mobile (moving).
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
or Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
root words
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
. A large portion of the technical
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
and scientific
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
lexicon
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and other Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
an languages consists of classical compounds. For example, bio- combines with -graphy to form biography. A vowel usually facilitates the combination: in biography, the Greek thematic vowel -o-, in miniskirt, the Latin thematic -i-. This vowel is usually regarded as attached to the initial base (bio-, mini-) rather than the final base (-graphy, -skirt), but in Greek-derived forms it is sometimes shown as attached to the final base (-ography, -ology). If, however, the final base begins with a vowel (for example, -archy as in monarchy), the mediating vowel has traditionally been avoided (no *monoarchy), but in recent coinages it is often kept and generally accompanied by a hyphen (auto-analysis, bio-energy, hydro-electricity, not *autanalysis, *bienergy, *hydrelectricity).
Source of international technical vocabulary
Classical compounds represent a significant source of Neo-Latin vocabulary. Moreover, since these words are composed from classical languageClassical language
A classical language is a language with a literature that is classical. According to UC Berkeley linguist George L. Hart, it should be ancient, it should be an independent tradition that arose mostly on its own, not as an offshoot of another tradition, and it must have a large and extremely rich...
s whose prestige is or was respected throughout the West European culture, these words typically appear in many different languages. Their widespread use makes technical writing
Technical writing
Technical writing, a form of technical communication, is a style of writing used in fields as diverse as computer hardware and software, engineering, chemistry, the aerospace industry, robotics, finance, consumer electronics, and biotechnology....
generally accessible to readers who may only have a smattering of the language in which it appears.
Not all Western European languages have been equally receptive to classical technical compounds. German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, for instance, has historically attempted to create its own technical vocabulary from native elements. Usually, these creations are German calques on the international vocabulary, such as Wasserstoff for hydrogen
Hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the symbol H. With an average atomic weight of , hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75% of the Universe's chemical elemental mass. Stars in the main sequence are mainly...
. Like any exercise in language prescription, this endeavour has been only partially successful, so while official German may still speak of a Fernsprecher, public telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
s will be labelled with the internationally recognized Telefon.
Formation, spelling, and pronunciation
These words are compounds formed from Latin and Ancient Greek root words. Ancient Greek words are almost invariably romanized (see transliteration of Ancient Greek into English). In English:- Ancient Greek αι becomes e, or sometimes æ or ae in British EnglishBritish EnglishBritish English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
. - Ancient Greek groups with γ plus a stop consonantStop consonantIn phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
such as γγ or γκ become ng and nc (or nk in more recent borrowings) respectively. - Ancient Greek ει often becomes i (occasionally it is retained as ei).
- Ancient Greek κ becomes c (subject to palatalizationPalatalizationIn linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
in English pronunciation) or k. - Ancient Greek (rhoRhoRho is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 100. It is derived from Semitic resh "head"...
with spiritus asperSpiritus asperIn the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing , is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, diphthong, or rho. It remained in the polytonic orthography even after the Hellenistic period, when the sound disappeared from the Greek language...
) becomes rh. - Ancient Greek θ becomes th.
- Ancient Greek φ becomes ph or very rarely f.
- Ancient Greek ψ becomes ps.
- Ancient Greek χ becomes ch.
- Ancient Greek υ becomes y.
- Ancient Greek ου becomes u.
- Ancient Greek ω becomes o.
- Ancient Greek rough breathing becomes h-.
Thus, for example, Ancient Greek σφιγξ becomes English (and Latin) sphinx
Sphinx
A sphinx is a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head or a cat head.The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless...
. Exceptions to these romanizing rules occur, such as leukemia
Leukemia
Leukemia or leukaemia is a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow characterized by an abnormal increase of immature white blood cells called "blasts". Leukemia is a broad term covering a spectrum of diseases...
(leukaemia); compare leukocyte, also leucocyte. In Latin, and in the target languages, the Greek vowels are given their classical values rather than their contemporary values in demotic Greek.
Ancient Greek words often contain consonant cluster
Consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
s which are foreign to the phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
of contemporary English and other languages that incorporate these words into their lexicon: diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
; pneumatology
Pneumatology
Pneumatology is the study of spiritual beings and phenomena, especially the interactions between humans and God.Pneuma is Greek for "breath", which metaphorically describes a non-material being or influence....
, phthisis. The traditional response in English is to treat the unfamiliar cluster as containing one or more silent letter
Silent letter
In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation...
s and suppress their pronunciation, more modern speakers tend to try and pronounce the unusual cluster. This adds to the irregularities of English spelling; moreover, since many of these words are encountered in writing more often than they are heard spoken, it introduces uncertainty as to how to pronounce them when encountered.
Classical compounds frequently vary their stressed syllable when suffixes
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
are added: ágriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
, agricúltural. This also gives rise to uncertainty when these words are encountered in print. Once a classical compound has been created and borrowed, it typically becomes the foundation of a whole series of related words: e.g. astrology
Astrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
, astrological, astrologer/astrologist, astrologism.
History and reception
English began incorporating many of these words in the sixteenth century; geographyGeography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
first appeared in an English text in 1535. Other early adopted words that still survive include mystagogue
Mystagogue
A mystagogue is a person who initiates others into mystic beliefs, an educator or person who has knowledge of the Sacred Mysteries. Another word is Hierophant....
, from the 1540s, and androgyne, from the 1550s. The use of these technical terms predates the scientific method
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
; the several varieties of divination
Divination
Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic standardized process or ritual...
all take their names from classical compounds, such as alectryomancy
Alectryomancy
Alectryomancy is a form of divination in which the diviner observes a bird, several birds pecking at grain that the diviner has scattered on the ground...
, divination by the pecking of chicken
Chicken
The chicken is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the Red Junglefowl. As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, and with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other species of bird...
s.
Not all English writers have been friendly to the reception of classical vocabulary. The Tudor period writer Sir John Cheke
John Cheke
Sir John Cheke was an English classical scholar and statesman, notable as the first Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University....
wrote:
- I am of this opinion that our own tung should be written cleane and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borrowing of other tunges; wherein if we take not heed by tiim, ever borowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt.
and therefore rejected what he called "inkhorn term
Inkhorn term
An inkhorn term is any foreign borrowing into English deemed to be unnecessary or overly pretentious.- Etymology :...
s".
Similar sentiments moved the nineteenth century author William Barnes
William Barnes
William Barnes was an English writer, poet, minister, and philologist. He wrote over 800 poems, some in Dorset dialect and much other work including a comprehensive English grammar quoting from more than 70 different languages.-Life:He was born at Rushay in the parish of Bagber, Dorset, the son of...
to create "pure English," in which he sought to strip out all Ancient Greek and Latinisms and find Anglo-Saxon
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
equivalents therefor: for Barnes, the newly invented art of the photograph
Photograph
A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...
became a sun-print. Unlike this one, some of Barnes's coinages caught on, such as foreword
Foreword
A foreword is a piece of writing sometimes placed at the beginning of a book or other piece of literature. Written by someone other than the primary author of the work, it often tells of some interaction between the writer of the foreword and the book's primary author or the story the book tells...
, Barnes's replacement for the preface
Preface
A preface is an introduction to a book or other literary work written by the work's author. An introductory essay written by a different person is a foreword and precedes an author's preface...
of a book. Later, Poul Anderson
Poul Anderson
Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories...
wrote a jocular piece called Uncleftish Beholding
Uncleftish Beholding
Uncleftish Beholding is a short text written by Poul Anderson. It is written using almost exclusively words of Germanic origin, and was intended to illustrate what the English language might look like if it had not received its considerable number of loanwords from other languages, particularly...
in a constructed language
Constructed language
A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
based on English which others have called Ander-Saxon; this attempted to create a pure English vocabulary for nuclear physics
Nuclear physics
Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies the building blocks and interactions of atomic nuclei. The most commonly known applications of nuclear physics are nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons technology, but the research has provided application in many fields, including those...
.
More recent developments
Many such words, such as thermometerThermometer
Developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, a thermometer is a device that measures temperature or temperature gradient using a variety of different principles. A thermometer has two important elements: the temperature sensor Developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, a thermometer (from the...
, dinosaur
Dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...
, rhinoceros
Rhinoceros
Rhinoceros , also known as rhino, is a group of five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia....
, and rhododendron
Rhododendron
Rhododendron is a genus of over 1 000 species of woody plants in the heath family, most with showy flowers...
, are thoroughly incorporated into the English lexicon and are the ordinary words for their referents. Some are prone to colloquial
Colloquialism
A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday, unconstrained conversation rather than in formal speech, academic writing, or paralinguistics. Dictionaries often display colloquial words and phrases with the abbreviation colloq. as an identifier...
shortening; rhinoceros often becomes rhino, a situation which may give rise to ambiguity when someone moves from speaking of rhinoceroses to rhinovirus
Rhinovirus
Human rhinoviruses are the most common viral infective agents in humans and are the predominant cause of the common cold. Rhinovirus infection proliferates in temperatures between 33–35 °C , and this may be why it occurs primarily in the nose...
es, being unclear whether the speaker is talking about a Rhino virus, or a Rhinovirus. The binomial nomenclature
Binomial nomenclature
Binomial nomenclature is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, although they can be based on words from other languages...
of taxonomy
Taxonomy
Taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a classification. The field of taxonomy, sometimes referred to as "biological taxonomy", revolves around the description and use of taxonomic units, known as taxa...
and biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
is a major source for these items of vocabulary; for many unfamiliar species that lack a common English name, the name of the genus
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...
becomes the English word for that life form.
In the metric system
Si
Si, si, or SI may refer to :- Measurement, mathematics and science :* International System of Units , the modern international standard version of the metric system...
, prefixes that indicate multiplier
Multiplier
The term multiplier may refer to:In electrical engineering:* Binary multiplier, a digital circuit to perform rapid multiplication of two numbers in binary representation* Analog multiplier, a device that multiplies two analog signals...
s are typically Greek in origin, such as kilogram, while those that indicate divisor
Divisor
In mathematics, a divisor of an integer n, also called a factor of n, is an integer which divides n without leaving a remainder.-Explanation:...
s are Latin, as in millimeter: the base roots resemble Greek words, but in truth are neologisms. These metric and other suffixes are added to native English roots as well, resulting in creations such as gigabyte
Gigabyte
The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
. Words of mixed Latin and Greek lineage, or words that combine elements of the classical languages with English – so-called hybrid word
Hybrid word
A hybrid word is a word which etymologically has one part derived from one language and another part derived from a different language.-Common hybrids:The most common form of hybrid word in English is one which combines etymologically Latin and Greek parts...
s – were formerly castigated as "barbarism
Barbarism (grammar)
Barbarism refers to a non-standard word, expression or pronunciation in a language, particularly one prescriptively regarded as an error in morphology, while a solecism is something prescriptively regarded as an error in syntax. The term is used mainly for the written language...
s" by prescriptionist usage commentators; this disapproval has mostly abated. Indeed, in scientific nomenclature, even more exotic hybrids have appeared, such as for example the dinosaur Yangchuanosaurus
Yangchuanosaurus
Yangchuanosaurus was a theropod dinosaur that lived in China during the late Oxfordian stage of the Late Jurassic, and was similar in size and appearance to its North American contemporary, Allosaurus...
. Personal name
Name
A name is a word or term used for identification. Names can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. A personal name identifies a specific unique and identifiable individual person, and may or may not include a middle name...
s appear in some scientific names such as Fuchsia
Fuchsia
Fuchsia is a genus of flowering plants that consists mostly of shrubs or small trees. The first, Fuchsia triphylla, was discovered on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in 1703 by the French Minim monk and botanist, Charles Plumier...
.
Classical compounds are sometimes used to lend grandeur or the impression of scientific rigour to humble pursuits: the study of cosmetology
Cosmetology
Cosmetology is the study and application of beauty treatment. Branches of specialty including hairstyling, skin care, cosmetics, manicures/pedicures, and electrology....
will not help anyone become an astronaut
Astronaut
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
. Compounds along these models are also sometimes coined for humorous effect, such as odontopodology, the science of putting your foot into your mouth. These humorous coinages sometimes take on a life of their own, such as garbology
Garbology
The primary academic meaning of garbology is the study of refuse and trash. As an academic discipline it was pioneered at the University of Arizona and long directed by William Rathje. The project started in 1973, originating from an idea of two students for a class project...
, the study of garbage
Waste
Waste is unwanted or useless materials. In biology, waste is any of the many unwanted substances or toxins that are expelled from living organisms, metabolic waste; such as urea, sweat or feces. Litter is waste which has been disposed of improperly...
.
Some classical compounds form classical plurals, and are therefore irregular in English. Others do not, while some vacillate between classical and regular plurals.
Translation
There are hundreds of classical compounds in English and other European languages. As traditionally defined, they cannot stand alone as free words, but there are many exceptions to this rule, and in the late 20th century such forms are increasingly used independently: bio as a clipping of biography, telly as a respelt clipping of television. Most classical compounds translate readily into everyday language, especially nouns: bio- as ‘life’ -graphy as ‘writing, description’. Because of this, the compounds of which they are part (usually classical or learned compounds) can be more or less straightforwardly paraphrased: biography as ‘writing about a life’, neurology as ‘the study of the nervous system’. Many classical compounds are designed to take initial or final position: autobiography has the two initial or preposed forms auto-, bio-, and one postposed form -graphy. Although most occupy one position or the other, some can occupy both: -graph- as in graphology and monograph; -phil- as in philology and Anglophile. Occasionally, the same base is repeated in one word: logology the study of words, phobophobia the fear of fear.Preposed and postposed
Forms that come first include: aero- air, crypto- hidden, demo- people, geo- earth, odonto- tooth, ornitho- bird, thalasso sea. Many have both a traditional simple meaning and a modern telescopic meaning: in biology, bio- means ‘life’, but in bio-degradable it telescopes ‘biologically’; although hypno- basically means ‘sleep’ (hypnopaedia learning through sleep), it also stands for ‘hypnosis’ (hypnotherapy cure through hypnosis). When a form stands alone as a present-day word, it is usually a telescopic abbreviation: bio biography, chemo chemotherapy, hydro hydroelectricity, metro metropolitan. Some telescoped forms can be shorter than the original classical compounds: gynie is shorter than gyneco- and stands for both gynecology and gynecologist; anthro is shorter than anthropo- and stands for anthropology. Forms that come second include: -ectomy cutting out, -graphy writing, description, -kinesis motion, -logy study, -mancy divination, -onym name, -phagy eating, -phony sound, -therapy healing, -tomy cutting. They are generally listed in dictionaries without the interfixed vowel, which appears however in such casual phrases as ‘ologies and isms’.Variants
Some classical compounds are variants of one base.Some are also free words, such as mania in dipsomania and phobia in claustrophobia.
Some are composites of other elements, such as encephalo- brain, from en- in, -cephal- head, and -ectomy cutting out, from ec- out, -tom- cut, -y, a noun-forming suffix that means "process of".
Origins
In Greek and Latin grammar, combining bases usually require a thematic or stem-forming vowel. In biography, from Greek, the thematic is -o-; in agriculture, from Latin, it is -i-. In English, which does not inflect in this way and has no native thematic vowels, an element like -o- is an imported glue that holds bases together. Its presence helps to distinguish classical compounds like biography and agriculture from vernacular compounds like teapot and blackbird. Generally, English has acquired its classical compounds in three ways: through French from Latin and Greek, directly from Latin and Greek, and by coinage in English on Greek and Latin patterns. An exception is schizophrenia, which came into English through German, and is therefore pronounced ‘skitso’, not ‘skyzo’. The classical compounds are as much a part of English as of Latin and Greek, and as much a part of French, Spanish, Italian, and any other language that cares to use them. They are an international resource.The conservative tradition
From the RenaissanceRenaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
until the mid-20th century, the concept of derivational purity has generally regulated the use of classical compounds: Greek with Greek, Latin with Latin, and a minimum of hybridization. Biography is Greek, agriculture Latin, but television is a hybrid of Greek tele- and Latin -vision (probably so coined because the ‘pure’ form telescope had already been adopted for another purpose). Most dictionaries follow the OED in using combining form (comb. form) to label such classical elements, but the name is not widely known. In appendices to dictionaries and grammar books, classical compounds are often loosely referred to as roots or affixes: ‘a logo …, properly speaking, is not a word at all but a prefix meaning word and short for logogram, a symbol, much as telly is short for television’ (Montreal Gazette, 13 Apr. 1981). They are often referred to as affixes because some come first and some come last, but if they were affixes, a word like biography would have no base whatever. While affixes are grammatical (like prepositions), classical compounds are lexical
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
(like nouns, adjectives, and verbs): for example, bio- translates as a noun (life), -graphy as a verbal noun (writing). They are also often loosely called roots because they are ancient and have a basic role in word formation, but functionally and often structurally they are distinct from roots: the -graph in autograph is both a root and a classical compound, while the -graphy in cryptography consists of root -graph- and suffix -y, and is only a classical compound.
Contemporary developments
Generally, classical compounds were a closed system from the 16c to the earlier 20c: the people who used them were classically educated, their teachers and exemplars generally took a purist's view on their use, contexts of use were mainly technical, and there was relatively little seepage into the language at large. However, with the decline of classical education and the spread of technical and quasi-technical jargon in the media, a continuum has evolved, with at least five stages:Pure classical usage
In the older sciences, classical compounds are generally used to form such strictly classical and usually Greek compounds as: anthocyanin, astrobleme, chemotherapy, chronobiology, cytokinesis, glossolalia, lalophobia, narcolepsy, osteoporosis, Pliohippus, sympathomimetic.Hybrid classical usage
In technical, semitechnical, and quasi-technical usage at large, coiners of compounds increasingly treat Latin and Greek as one resource, to produce such forms as: accelerometer, aero-generator, bioprospector, communicology, electroconductive, futurology, mammography, micro-gravity, neoliberal, Scientology, servomechanism, Suggestopedia.Hybrid classical/vernacular usage
In the later 20c, many forms have cut loose from ancient moorings: crypto- as in preposed Crypto-Fascist and pseudo- as in pseudoradical; postposed -meter in speedometer, clapometer. Processes of analogy have created coinages like petrodollar, psycho-warfare, microwave on such models as petrochemical, psychology, microscope. Such stunt usages as eco-doom, eco-fears, eco-freaks, common in journalism, often employ classical compounds telescopically: eco-standing for ecology and ecological and not as used in economics. In such matters, precision of meaning is secondary to compactness and vividness of expression.Combining forms as separate words
In recent years, the orthography of many word forms has changed, usually without affecting pronunciation and stress. The same spoken usage may be written micro-missile, micro missile, micromissile, reflecting the same uncertainty or flexibility as in businessman, business-man, business man. When used in such ways, classical compounds are often telescopic: Hydro substation Hydro-Electricity Board substation, Metro highways Metropolitan highways, porno cult pornography cult.New classical compounds
The mix of late 20c techno-commercial coinages includes three groups of post- and non-classical forms: (1) Established forms: econo- from ‘economic’, as in econometric, Econo-Car, mini- from ‘miniature’, as in miniskirt, mini-boom, -matic from ‘automatic’, as in Adjustamatic, Instamatic, Stackomatic. (2) Less established forms, often created by blending: accu- from ‘accurate’, as in Accuvision; compu- from ‘computer’, as in Compucorp; docu- from ‘documentary’, as in docudrama; dura- from ‘durable’, as in Duramark. (3) Informal vernacular material in pseudo-classical form: Easibird, Healthitone, Redi-pak, Relax-a-Cisor (relax, exerciser).Binational forms
Word forms exist for describing relations or interactions between two nations or societies, such as "Anglo-French" (England and France), Franco-Italian (France and Italy), Greco-Turkish (Greece and Turkey), Russo-Japanese (Russia and Japan), Sino-Cambodian (China and Cambodian), Americo-Liberian (the United States and the African nation of Liberia). In theory, at least, word forms exist to describe every conceivable pairing, although some (Peruvo-Ugandan? Papuo-Icelandic?) may tend more to the fabulous than the actually useful forms. Note that it could be argued that Franco-English, Italo-French, Turco-Grecian, and so forth are equally valid ways of describing the relationship or interactions. The term Afro-American was formerly used to describe a Black American, but now it is deemed more politically correct not to use the Afro- combining form and instead the term African American is used.Similar systems
In East Asia, a similar role to Latin and Greek has been played by Chinese, with non-Chinese languages both borrowing significant number of words from Chinese, and using morphemes borrowed from Chinese to coin words, particularly formal or technical language. See Sino-Japanese vocabulary, Sino-Korean vocabulary, and Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary for discussion.The coinage of new native terms on Chinese roots is most notable in Japanese, where it is referred to as . Many of these have been subsequently borrowed into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese, with the same (or corresponding) characters being pronounced differently according to language, just as happens in European languages – compare English biology and French biologie.
For example, 自動車 (Japanese jidōsha, Korean jadongcha) is a Japanese-coined word meaning “automobile”, literally self-move-car; compare to auto (self) + mobile (moving).
See also
- Combining form
- International scientific vocabularyInternational Scientific VocabularyInternational scientific vocabulary comprises scientific and specialized words whose language of origin may or may not be certain, but which are in current use in several modern languages. The name "International Scientific Vocabulary" was first used by Philip Gove in Webster’s Third New...
- Internationalism (linguistics)Internationalism (linguistics)In linguistics, an internationalism or international word is a loanword that occurs in several languages with the same or at least similar meaning and etymology. These words exist in "several different languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from the ultimate source"...
- List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names
- Greek and Latin roots in English
- List of Greek words with English derivatives
- List of Latin words with English derivatives
- Hybrid wordHybrid wordA hybrid word is a word which etymologically has one part derived from one language and another part derived from a different language.-Common hybrids:The most common form of hybrid word in English is one which combines etymologically Latin and Greek parts...
- -ology
- -ism
- Latin influence in EnglishLatin influence in EnglishEnglish is a Germanic language, having a grammar and core vocabulary inherited from Proto-Germanic. However, a significant portion of the English wordhoard comes from Romance and Latinate sources. Estimates of native words range from 20%–33%, with the rest made up of foreign borrowings...
- List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English
- InterlinguaInterlinguaInterlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...
External links
- Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language 1998 entries on classical compound and combining form