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[personal profile] muckefuck
(Let me know if y'all are getting tired of the linguistic posts, okay? 'Cause I've got another planned for tomorrow as well.)

The other night, [livejournal.com profile] bunj and I were touching on the (for all intents) dead D&D campaign we were in this year and I mentioned I had coined the adjective Lycocephalian to refer to our merry band from Wolfshead. Then, out of nowhere, he said, "How would you say 'potato-head'?" Since the potato is a New World vegetable, there is no Classical name for it. [livejournal.com profile] monshu, when forced to speak Latin at dinner, used the generic tuberes. "Tubericephalian?" Now, that's mixing Latin and Greek roots and I will not abide it, not for coinages that I have a hand in. My modern Greek dictionary lists geomēlon, i.e. "earth-apple" (cf. Fr. pomme de terre, dial. Ger. Erdapfel), but geomelocephalian is quite a mouthful, isn't it?

The trouble with Latin is that it just isn't as adept at forming compounds as Greek is. However, there are biceps and centiceps for "two-headed" and "hundred-headed", respectively. Why not tubericeps? Yes, but how to English it? We have bicipital and bicipitous, so by analogy tubericipitous. Of course,at this point, we've built a word only 25% shorter than the Greek, but I think it flows a little better. I'll still take Lycocephalian over Lupicipitan, though.

Anyone else have a word-building challenge for me?

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