-ency/-ancy vs. -ence/-ance

[Wilson Gray]

On 10/5/05, sagehen <sagehen at westelcom.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Re: -ency/-ancy vs. -ence/-ance
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >sagehen wrote:
> >> I remember how startling I found it to hear "emergent" for the first time,
> >> back in the late 50s, as referring to the underlying crisis of an
> >> emergency. It was not meant as "developing," but as  qualifying the
> >> situation for "emergency" status. This seems in the intervening years to
> >> have become standard jargon in hospitals & related services.
> >
> >The word is quite old in that sense, or a closely related one; cf. John
> >Donne's _Devotions upon Emergent Occasions_ (the source of, among
> >other things, the famous passage about "ask not for whom the bell
> >tolls").
> >
> >Jim Parish
> ~~~~~~~~
> Interesting.  I guess I'd never noticed -- or I'd misinterpreted -- that.
> AM
>

Ditto, sagehen.
--
-Wilson Gray