oronym

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Wednesday, January 31, 2001 3:15 pm -0500 "Douglas G. Wilson"
<douglas at NB.NET> wrote:

>> ... There's nothing in the style that marks it as a new word, and no
>> indication of why
>> 'oro' (which AHD4 lists as the Greek prefix for 'mountain'; unless the
>> coiner was mixing classical roots and meant this to be the Latin for
>> 'mouth').
>
> I suspect he's mixing roots worse than that: "oro-" < English "or": the
> item can be read either this way OR that way.
>
> It's like "backronym", probably.

Ah, clever work!

Lynne


M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
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