'homosexual' with short o

[Laurence Horn]

On Mar 27, 2014, at 10:04 PM, Geoffrey Nunberg wrote:

> When did people begin to pronouce 'homosexual' with a "long o," as if it came from Latin for "man" (the species, not only its males, who are 'vir')  rather than with an etymologically correct "short o," as in 'homogenize' etc. etc.? Or have they always?
>
> The 1927 New Century gives only short o; the 1933 OED entry gives both, with long-o first. Webster's Third in 1961 gives only long o for 'homosexual' but gives short o as a variant in 'homoerotic'.
>
> There's other evidence for variation in this period. Kinsey's 1953 Sexual Behavior in the Human Female says:
>
>> The term homosexual comes from the Greek prefix homo, referring to  the sameness of the individuals involved, and not from the Latin word him which means man. It contrasts with the term heterosexual which refers to  responses or contacts between individuals of different (hetero) sexes.
>
> Some potentially earlier evidence is found in Evelyn Waugh's Unconditional Surrender, published in 1961 but set during the war; the second speaker is an older upper-class man.
>
>> "You're not a homosexual?"…
>> "Good gracious, no. Besides the "o" is short. It comes from the Greek not the Latin."
>
> Or maybe the real question should be when the short-o pronunciation disappeared, if it was ever prevalent in the first place. You'd figure this would reinforce the widespread tendency to restrict the term to males.
>
If so, it's an etymological incorrect association, given that "homo" was not restricted to men, although its heirs are.  But on the short "o" question, the Greek 'same' prefix often ends up with a long o (with secondary stress) at least by preference (mine and AHD's), whether in "homosexual", "homogeneous", "homograph", "homorganic", "homocentric" ('having the same center'), "homozygous", and "homotaxis", the last three not really active in my own vocabulary, I confess.  "Homophone" and "homonym" play for the short-o team, to be sure.  On the other hand, "hominid", from Latin _homo_, has short o.  You'd think trisyllabic laxing would come into play, but its effect seems inconsistent.  In any case, I'm not sure there's really a robust correlation either way; I don't know how long "homorganic" or "homogeneous" have been pronounced with long o, but perhaps nothing special is going on with "homosexual".  "Homogenize" doesn't really count because the first syllable has no stress !
 instead of secondary stress; that's why "homogeneous" (long o for me) is a better test case than "homogenous" (which I don't use but have only ever heard with short o).

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org