Erin's Wonderful Word--admit

[sagehen]

>A., Erin has her etymology on. She's adding a Greek prefix to a Greek
>stem. However, I agree with you that it still appears to be, somehow,
>not quite right. It seems to me that the opposite of "dysteleology"
>should be "euteleology" and not the semantically-neutral "teleology."
>Unless, of course, you're willing to accept, e.g. "phony," and not
>"euphony" as the opposite of "cacophony." ;-)
>
>-Wilson
~~~~~~~~
I hadn't actually considered the consonance w/Greek. We do mix Greek &
Latin bits together pretty freely, anyway.  My feeling had more to do with
the privative sense of *dis* versus the judgmental sense of *dys*.
"Dysteleology" sounds like making a hash of it, rather than simply denying
the existence of an underlying purpose.
AM
~~~~~~~~~~
>On Jul 13, 2005, at 9:53 AM, sagehen wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Erin's Wonderful Word--admit
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> --------
>>
>>> Did anyone else find the use of the verb "admit" in this definition
>>> just a
>>> little bit, well, presuppositional (which is not the same thing as
>>> pre-suppository)?
>>>
>>> Erin's Weird and Wonderful Word of the Day:
>>>
>>> dysteleology
>>> [dis-tell-ee-AH-luh-djee]
>>> the study of the organs of plants and animals without admitting that
>>> there
>>> is any purpose to their design. The antonym is teleology, studying
>>> things with
>>> the idea that there is a purpose for everything in nature. Someone
>>> who is
>>> unwilling to admit the existence of design in nature has teleophobia.
>> ~~~~~~~~~
>> Looking again at this, it occurs to me that to fit this
>> definition,*dis*
>> might be a more appropriate prefix than *dys*.
>> A. Murie
>>