[Generally it has been coined as] Obamadon

[Tom Zurinskas]

Well then the Republicans should beware the killer smirk of the Bidenodon.


Tom Zurinskas, Conn 20 yrs, Tenn 3, NJ 33, now Fl 9.
See how English spelling links to sounds at http://justpaste.it/ayk



> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject: Re: [Generally it has been coined as] Obamadon
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Dec 16, 2012, at 4:01 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> >
> > On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 2:33 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> >> Researchers Name Millions-Year-Old Lizard _after President’s Name_
> >
> > That's true. But, how? [[obama][don]]? What does _don_ mean, in taxonomy?
>
> it's a variant of -odont, the 'tooth' stem, with the -a of "Obama" swallowing up the -o
>
> from Michael Quinion's affixes site, under -odont:
>
> The ending -odont appears in adjectives that refer to the type of teeth possessed by animals. Examples are labyrinthodont, having the enamel deeply folded to form a labyrinthine structure; bunodont (Greek bounos, mound), having molar teeth with crowns in the form of rounded or conical cusps; diphyodont (Greek dis, twice, plus phuein, come into being), having two sets of teeth during its development, as humans do.
>
> ... Words ending in -odon have the same sense: mastodon, a large extinct elephant-like mammal of the Miocene to Pleistocene epochs (Greek mastos, breast, because it has nipple-shaped tubercles on the crowns of its molar teeth); iguanodon, a large herbivorous dinosaur of the early to mid Cretaceous period, named thus because its teeth resemble those of the iguana.
>
> arnold
>
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