anthro(po)cene

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 2/11/07, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "Anthrocene"?! Please! "Androcene"! FWIW, "anthropocene' is the
> superior term, to the extent that it doesn't exclude women on the one
> hand and isn't pretentious pswaydo-learned gibberish on the other.

I suspect there's some back-formation going on in the use of
"anthro-" rather than "anthropo-", perhaps due to "anthropology"
typically getting shortened to "anthro". One also sometimes sees
"anthrocentrism" for "anthropocentrism", "anthromorphic" for
"anthropomorphic", etc. And there's an International Society for
Anthrozoology...

http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/CCAB/isaz.htm


--Ben Zimmer

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