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Words using both Latin and Greek roots

  Tags: Loanwords | Greek | Latin
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JW
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 Message 1 of 8
29 August 2009 at 11:43pm | IP Logged 
administrator wrote:
Words using both Latin and Greek roots are rather common.

O.K. Test of your etymological prowess. What are some English words that mix Latin and Greek roots?

The one that started the discussion was “Super Polyglot”.
Super = Latin for “of an extreme or excessive degree” (as used here)
Polyglot (πολύγλωσσος) = Greek for many languages
Thus a Super Polyglot is one who speaks an inordinate number of languages

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bouda
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 Message 2 of 8
30 August 2009 at 2:37am | IP Logged 
I can't think of any long-established words for now, but I think this is probably
relatively common in terms of neologisms, which is after all what we're talking about
with "superpolyglot." Some possibilities, some dating from a century ago (warning: I've
never done Latin and my Ancient Greek is rusty):

hyperspace
genocide
heterosexual
meritocracy

Edited by bouda on 30 August 2009 at 2:40am

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stelingo
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 Message 3 of 8
30 August 2009 at 2:14pm | IP Logged 
Possibly the most common example in the English language is television. The inventor, John Baird, coined the name by combining the Greek tele, distant, with the Latin vision, seeing.


Edited by stelingo on 30 August 2009 at 2:15pm

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seldnar
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 Message 4 of 8
31 August 2009 at 4:42am | IP Logged 
Another common example is homosexual. The first half is Greek for "same" and the second
half is Latin for...well, I think its obvious.

Words that are a mixture of classical roots are often called barbarisms, I believe.
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Cabaire
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 Message 5 of 8
31 August 2009 at 1:35pm | IP Logged 
What about "automobile". "mobilis" (movable) is Latin but αὐτός (self) is Greek. For that reason the word in modern Greek is Αυτοκίνητο.
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JW
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 Message 6 of 8
31 August 2009 at 4:30pm | IP Logged 
seldnar wrote:
Words that are a mixture of classical roots are often called barbarisms, I believe.


bouda wrote:
I can't think of any long-established words for now, but I think this is probably
relatively common in terms of neologisms...

Yes, a barbarism in linguistics is an “error of morphology.”

I believe it is an error of morphology to mix classical roots. All of the examples thus far are indeed neologisms. This is because Latin and Greek are no longer the pillars of education that they historically have been in English speaking countries.


Edited by JW on 31 August 2009 at 4:35pm

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Levi
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 Message 7 of 8
24 September 2009 at 11:59pm | IP Logged 
"Monolingual". "Mono-" is Greek, "-lingual" is Latin. Should be "unilingual" or
"monoglot".
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dakrabby
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 Message 8 of 8
13 November 2012 at 11:21pm | IP Logged 
A few more:

Aquaphobia
Automobile
Biathlon
Bigamy
Bigram
Bioluminescence
Claustrophobia
Democide
Divalent
Dysfunction
Electrocution
Eusociality
Geostationary
Hexadecimal
Hexavalent
Homosexual
Hyperactive
Hypercomplex
Hypercorrection
Hyperextension
Hypervisor
Liposuction
Macroinstruction
Mattergy
Mega-annum
Metadata
Microvitum
Minneapolis
Monoculture
Monolingual
Multigraph
Neonate
Neuroscience
Neurotransmitter
Nonagon
Pandeism
Periglacial
Polyamory
Polydeism
Quadraphonic
Quadriplegia
Sociology
Sociopath
Television
Tonsillectomy
Vexillology


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