greek + latin

Mark A. Mandel mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU
Tue Oct 24 14:01:30 UTC 2006


Arnold inquired:
    >>>>>

a correspondent writes to ask about words combining greek and latin stems:
television, scientology, hyperspace, Astrodome, homosexual, etc.  is there a
standard label for the phenomenon.

i see that the semi-technical (and pretty transparent) term "Greco-Latin
hybrid" has some use. "Greco-Latin composite" would be equally good, but
seems not to be used.

any other candidates out there?  especially, any self-illustrating ones
(terms that are themseves Greco-Latin hybrids)?

 <<<<<

Automobile.

I would exclude from the list all candidates in which one of the components
is a productive affix in English, such as "sociology", mentioned in an
earlier post on this thread. It may have been a more striking example at the
time, but now "-ology", "-ize", "pre-", "inter-", and dozens or scores of
others are thoroughly naturalized. And I'm not even considering technical
jargons, but just words known to the famous nonexistent average educated
reader.

Looking back on the first paragraph, I noticed that my two suffix examples
are of Greek origin and my two prefix examples are Latin. Does that reflect
an actual pattern in our vocabulary or is it just random?

-- Mark A. Mandel
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]

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