the history of Greco-Roman hybridizing

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Oct 23, 2006, at 2:17 PM, Fred Shapiro wrote:

> On Mon, 23 Oct 2006, Arnold M. Zwicky 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?
>
> This is a minor point, but I have discovered an antedating of the
> English
> word "homosexual" (J. A. Symonds used it in 1891, previously posted
> by me
> on this list).  I believe it was used in German before that.

my "was devised" is misleading.  1892 merely the date of the OED's
first cite in english.  the word originated in german.  according to
Wayne R. Dynes and Warren Johansson's entry "Homosexual (Term)" in
the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality (ed. by Dynes, 1990):

-----
The term homosexual began its public life in two anonymous German
pamphlets published by Károly Mária Kertbeny in 1869.  (He used the
term in private correspondence a year before.)

... His coinage might have gone unnoticed had not Gustav Jaeger, a
lifestyle reformer and professor of zoologt and anthropology at the
University of Stuttgart, popularised it in the second edition of his
_Entdeckung der Seele_ (1880).
-----

the article also notes: "Etymologically, the word is a hybrid..."

> I think "sociology" (French "sociologie" used by Comte, 1838,
> English word
> used in 1842) was an earlier example of a Greco-Roman etymological
> hybrid.

so we have some hybrids from other languages borrowed into english.
and some hybrids in latin itself, at least if mixed stem and affix
(as in "bigamy") count.  these would soften people up for fresh
creations in english involving two stems.  any idea when these
started?  (by now, hardly anyone notices, since so few have studied
greek and latin.  this part of the vocabulary is now just the
learnèd, or classical, stratum, with greek and latin mixed together.)

i do like "mongrel", contributed by matthew gordon (from Abbot &
Seeley via Bailey).

arnold

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