Re: Re: deracinate

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 11:15 PM 11/18/2004, you wrote:
>On Nov 18, 2004, at 9:42 PM, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       RonButters at AOL.COM
>>Subject:      =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:=20=A0=20=A0=20=A0=20Re:=20deracinate?=
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>--------
>>
>>In a message dated 11/18/04 9:01:49 PM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:
>>
>>
>>>At 7:54 PM -0500 11/18/04, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>>>>According to the OED, the word DERACINATE was apparently coined by
>>>>>Shakespeare, who used it first in Henry V, v,ii, 47. I say the bard
>>>>>borrowed it directly
>>>>>from French; my colleague George Williams, who is working on the
>>>>>Variori=
>>um
>>>>>Shakespeare, seems surprised that Shakespeare did not borrow the
>>>>>Latin=20
>>>form,
>>>>>which would be DERAXINATE. I will leave it to the Shakespeareans to
>>>>>figure out
>>>>>which is most likely from the point of view of the bard's mind and
>>>>>track
>>>>>record.
>>>>>But what=A0=A0 am wondering is as follows:
>>>>>
>>>>>1. Does anyone have an antedating to the 1599 Shakespeare quote?
>>>>>2. Does DERAXINATE feel as unlikely to ADS-ers as it does to me?
>>>>
>>>>1. No, but apparently the French verb dates from the 13th century.
>>>>
>>>>2. A Latin equivalent also exists in English: "eradicate".
>>>>"Deraxinate" o=
>>r
>>>>the like doesn't seem right in any language, at a glance.
>>>>
>>>>-- Doug Wilson
>>>=20
>>>I don't have my Latin dictionary on me, but two comments:
>>>(1)=A0 as I recall, the Latin root for root, radish, etc. is "radix",
>>>not "rax", so wouldn't it be (at worst) "deradix(in)ate"?
>>>(2)=A0 in any case, the stem for Romance (and hence English)
>>>formations
>>>from Latin is typically not the nominative form but the oblique
>>>(genitive/accusative/dative/ablative), which here is "radic-".
>>>Checking AHD4, I find that in fact there was a Late Latin
>>>reconstruction of the noun based on that stem, viz. "ra:dici:na".
>>>Thus we have radical, radish, eradicate (as Doug mentions), etc. and
>>>not radixal, radix, eradixate, etc.=A0 But why would one ever expect
>>>"rax"?
>>>=20
>>>larry
>>>=20
>>>=20
>>
>>Thanks for all the help. I'll pass it on to Professor Williams. 'm not
>>sure=20
>>why the Shakespeareans thought "deraxinate" would be the right
>>derivation fr=
>>om=20
>>the Latin. Maybe I misread my colleague's note. What he said to me was
>>"Why=20
>>would Shakespeare have coined a term with a 'c' and not an 'x'?" Maybe
>>what=20=
>>he=20
>>meant was "Why 'deracinate' and not 'deradixate' or 'deradixinate'?"
>
>Maybe Shakespeare had a reasonable command of Latin morphology?
>
>-Wilson Gray

Yes, he supposedly had "a little Latine and lesse Greeke," as I recall from
my medieval and Renaissance studies at SLU.