the history of Greco-Roman hybridizing

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 10/23/06, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> the correspondent who asked about Greco-Roman hybrids is enjoying the
> playful suggestions people have made, but now wonders how recent the
> phenomenon is.  anything before 1892, when "homosexual" was devised?
>
> meanwhile, another correspondent did a search of various sources, and
> found "hybrid" several places, and nothing else.

And a search for "hybrid" in OED etymologies turns up numerous earlier
examples, such as: limitrophe (1589), hexaped (1623), antipose (1631),
nonagon (1639), etc. (Some of these were originally hybridized in
French and then imported into English.)


--Ben Zimmer

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