Nov. 18th, 2004 05:25 pm
Me and my philoneologopoeia
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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]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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. 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?
The other night,
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. 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?