Singular for Greek/Latin derived words
chrissy
declensions for typically plural words with Greek and Latin origins?
I was trying to consider the singular for "hyperbole" recently. I
decided to cheat and rewrote to permit the plural, but I'd like to
know.
Tanti Baci
Chrissy
CyberCypher
news:f8f1b420.03081...@posting.google.com:
Try:
but they don't have a plural form for "hyperbole". For that you have to
check the unabridged M-W 3rd:
[quote]
Main Entry:hyperbole
Pronunciation:-(*)l*
Function:noun
Inflected Form:-s
Etymology:Latin, from Greek hyperbol* hyperbole, excess, extravagance,
from hyperballein to exceed, from hyper- + ballein to cast, throw *
more at DEVIL
: extravagant exaggeration that represents something as much greater
or less, better or worse, or more intense than it really is or that
depicts the impossible as actual (as *mile-high ice-cream cones*)
opposed to litotes
[quote]
Any decent unabridged English dictionary will tell you what the
singular and plural of our borrowed greco-latin words are. The plural
for the singular word "hyperbole" is "hyperboles"; I checked it out
just last week.
If you are looking for "correct Latin or Greek spellings of these
words, you will have to look them up in Latin and Greek grammars or
dictionaries, but there is no compelling reason to foreign spellings
in English when there are English spellings that are considered
acceptable in formal writing. And, with a very few exceptions, such
as indexes/indices and focuses/foci, using the "correct" singulars
and plurals for English words derived or borrowed from Latin or
Greek will lead only to your being called pretentious, not educated.
There are still a couple of such words where the original singular
and plural forms are still used, but not universally so, for
example, "datum/data" and "medium/media"; for these two, most native
speakers of English prefer the plural form for the singular and
godknows what they do about the plural . . . add an /-s/? or maybe they
use the same form for both the singular and plural, as with "fish"
and "sheep".
dcw
CyberCypher <hui...@netscape.com> wrote:
>There are still a couple of such words where the original singular
>and plural forms are still used, but not universally so, for
>example, "datum/data" and "medium/media"; for these two, most native
>speakers of English prefer the plural form for the singular and
>godknows what they do about the plural . . . add an /-s/? or maybe they
>use the same form for both the singular and plural, as with "fish"
>and "sheep".
I've met "agendum" a couple of times. I rather like it.
David
Sarah L. C. Cannell
"chrissy" <chrissy...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f8f1b420.03081...@posting.google.com...
But "hyperbole" *is* the singular. It's a perfectly ordinary first
declension feminine Greek ending.
sarah
--
Sarah Cannell
slcc...@rogers.com
http://www.ncf.ca/~ca659
CyberCypher
As in "What's on the agendum?" or "What is your agendum at the
moment?"
It's probably okay,
W3NID:
Main Entry:agendum
Function:noun
Inflected
Form:plural agendums or agenda \-d*\
Etymology:Latin
1 agenda plural a : the forms and ceremonies of church liturgy : the
ritual or order of worship *the church constitutions and agendum of
this period G.C.Rietschel* used in Protestant Christianity b :
matters of practical duty *the agendum of a Christian Ephraim
Chambers* distinguished from credenda
2 : AGENDA 2a *the agendum for the conference was agreed upon*
But W3NID also gives "agenda" as a singular noun with a plural of
"agendas". It's one of those words we can all agree to disagree about, I think.
Main Entry:agenda
Function:noun
Inflected Form:-s
Etymology:Latin,
neuter plural of agendum, gerundive of agere to drive, do * more at
AGENT
1 : a memorandum book *dragged a small agenda from his pocket
and began flicking the pages Monica Stirling*
2 a : a list or outline of things to be done, subjects to be
discussed, or business to be transacted *he sent out an agenda
before each meeting* b : a plan of procedure : PROGRAM *military
aggression was T on the agenda of international Communism
E.S.Furniss b.1890* *a brisk agenda of calisthenics E.J.Kahn*
rewboss
123...@myrtle.ukc.ac.uk...
"Datum" is a word that is very rarely needed, so it's not surprising few
people know it exists. Most people think of it as a mass noun, and that
seems to have become established, so the one form suffices. "Medium", as the
singular for "media" as in newspapers, television and so on, tends to get
replaced by whatever medium it actually is, since that says something useful
("medium" on its own would be hopelessly vague). "Media" makes far more
logical sense as a plural, but again is often treated as a mass noun. More
people take exception to that than to "data" as a mass noun.
You have to be careful about plurals of such words. One writer complained to
the BBC after she'd heard them talking about "referendums", saying it should
be "referenda". The answer was that the authority the BBC used says that
"referendum" has two distinct meanings in Latin: the first, which has no
plural in Latin, means the entire process of casting votes and so on. The
second, of which the plural is "referenda", means the question on the ballot
paper. The report was about two referendUMS, one of which had two referendA.
dcw
CyberCypher <hui...@netscape.com> wrote:
>D.C....@ukc.ac.uk (dcw) burbled news:123...@myrtle.ukc.ac.uk:
>> I've met "agendum" a couple of times. I rather like it.
>
>As in "What's on the agendum?" or "What is your agendum at the
>moment?"
Neither; "agendum" = "item on the agenda". (Latin: "thing to be
done".)
David
dcw
rewboss <rew...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>"Datum" is a word that is very rarely needed, so it's not surprising few
>people know it exists. Most people think of ["data"] as a mass noun, and that
>seems to have become established, so the one form suffices.
"Datum" has a specalized meaning ("reference point"), but it's pretty much
parted company with "data". I guess it has its own plural, "datums".
David
Richard Tobin
chrissy <chrissy...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>I was trying to consider the singular for "hyperbole" recently.
It *is* singular. The plural would be hyperbolae.
-- Richard
--
Spam filter: to mail me from a .com/.net site, put my surname in the headers.
FreeBSD rules!
Paul
"rewboss" <rew...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bht585$2qu37$1...@ID-185204.news.uni-berlin.de...
>
> "Datum" is a word that is very rarely needed, so it's not surprising few
> people know it exists. Most people think of it as a mass noun, and that
> seems to have become established, so the one form suffices. "Medium", as
the
> singular for "media" as in newspapers, television and so on, tends to get
> replaced by whatever medium it actually is, since that says something
useful
> ("medium" on its own would be hopelessly vague). "Media" makes far more
> logical sense as a plural, but again is often treated as a mass noun. More
> people take exception to that than to "data" as a mass noun.
>
Surveyors and Civil Engineers use it all the time.
- Paul
Paul
"dcw" <D.C....@ukc.ac.uk> wrote in message news:123...@myrtle.ukc.ac.uk...
I agree with you on this. I have used "datums" in work-related writing
because I knew that many of the people who might be reading it would have no
idea that data is the plural of datum.
Besides, do we have to know the plural rules for every borrowed word we use?
Is the difference between hadith and ahadith understood to people who have
not studies that topic very long? I prefer "hadiths" when talking to people
who are not familiar with islam so I don't have to waste another sentence
explaining that "ahadith" is the plural.
- Paul
Bob Cunningham
said:
You don't have to guess. "Datums" as the plural of "datum"
as used, for example, in surveying, is in a number of recent
American dictionaries with no pejorative tag. I say
"recent" because it's not in _Webster's New International
Dictionary Second Edition_, which was published in the
1930s.
However, it gets no mention in a couple of good, fairly
recent British dictionaries.
Geoff Pearson
"Richard Tobin" <ric...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:bht97b$9mi$1...@pc-news.cogsci.ed.ac.uk...
radius - radii I used them on a cycling newsgroup this week.
rewboss
Xmq0b.1313$r15.1...@twister.southeast.rr.com...
Maybe they do. Not being a surveyor or a civil engineer, I wouldn't know. It
might help if I knew what "it" was, but probably not very much.
I await further enlightenment.
Dr Robin Bignall
Have a datum. They are nice when freshly-picked.
--
wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall
Quiet part of Hertfordshire
England
Mike Lyle
> In article <f8f1b420.03081...@posting.google.com>,
> chrissy <chrissy...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >I was trying to consider the singular for "hyperbole" recently.
>
> It *is* singular. The plural would be hyperbolae.
>
Mike.
Martin Ambuhl
Bill Buckley, whose favorite form of argument is "I'm smarter than you, or
at least know words you don't; ergo, you lose," once had a guest who
objected to Bill's penchant for overuse of the "not un..." construction.
Bill plastered on his smug face and put his guest down properly: "Those are
litotes," with "litotes" pronounced /laItoUts/.
--
Martin Ambuhl
Paul
> Paul <nob...@nowhere.com> schrieb in im Newsbeitrag:
> Xmq0b.1313$r15.1...@twister.southeast.rr.com...
> >
> > "rewboss" <rew...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:bht585$2qu37$1...@ID-185204.news.uni-berlin.de...
> > >
> > > "Datum" is a word that is very rarely needed, so it's not surprising
few
> > > people know it exists.
> > >
> >
> > Surveyors and Civil Engineers use it all the time.
>
> Maybe they do. Not being a surveyor or a civil engineer, I wouldn't know.
It
> might help if I knew what "it" was, but probably not very much.
>
> I await further enlightenment.
Sorry about the ambiguity there. I was refering to "datum".
Michael West
"CyberCypher" <hui...@netscape.com> wrote in message
news:Xns93DCA6D3F...@130.133.1.4...
> chrissy...@yahoo.com (chrissy) burbled
> news:f8f1b420.03081...@posting.google.com:
>
> > Is there a place on the net where one can find correct singular
> > declensions for typically plural words with Greek and Latin
> > origins?
> >
> > I was trying to consider the singular for "hyperbole" recently. I
> > decided to cheat and rewrote to permit the plural, but I'd like to
> > know.
>
> Try:
>
> http://m-w.com
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/61/
>
> but they don't have a plural form for "hyperbole". For that you have to
> check the unabridged M-W 3rd:
I've never thought of it as being countable,
any more than, say "humor", as in "his use
of humor."
Still, I guess if "cliché" can be countable, then
so can 'oyperbowl (as the Piranha brothers
pronounced it).
--
Michael West
Melbourne, Australia
(Expat yank)
rewboss
p145kvgbjknvpcqfl...@4ax.com...
> Have a datum. They are nice when freshly-picked.
I quite like them dried, without the stonums, perhaps stuffed with
marzipanum, just like my grandmotherum used to make.
Mary Shafer
wrote:
> "Datum" is a word that is very rarely needed, so it's not surprising few
> people know it exists.
It's not a rare word at all. Surveyors use it; airplane
manufacturers, and all the folks who work on the airplanes, use it;
cartographers and map users use it; GPS users use it; birds use it,
bees use it; even Pekinese use it....
OK, forget the birds, bees, and Pekinese. It's Noel Coward's fault
that I got a little carried away.
It's still pretty common, albeit in fields you're apparently not
familiar with. A datum is a reference point from which things are
measured. Usually, the measurements are fairly large, like surveying
half a state or building a 747.
Mary
--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer
mil...@qnet.com
Mike Lyle
That's funny. Bill Buckley, btw, in British usage recalls a character
who spent the sixties orand seventies showing live-tv viewers how to
cover up attractive Victorian doors with sheets of hardboard (=
Masonite), and whose most famous conclusion was all the wallpaper on a
ceiling he'd just done falling on his head.
Did the US Buckley ever mention that great sporting contest, the
Hyper-Bowl?
I was listening to what seemed a good BBC radio series on philosophers
until the bloke pronounced "Thales" to rhyme with "sails": I
immediately lost confidence and interest.
Mike.
Tony Cooper
wrote:
>
>That's funny. Bill Buckley, btw, in British usage recalls a character
>who spent the sixties orand seventies showing live-tv viewers how to
>cover up attractive Victorian doors with sheets of hardboard (=
>Masonite),
>and whose most famous conclusion was all the wallpaper on a
>ceiling he'd just done falling on his head.
>
Try as I might, I cannot figure out what was intended here.
rewboss
0f16kvgheoki6joqm...@4ax.com...
It is a word that has currency in certain specialised fields. Add up all the
surveyors, people who work with planes, and cartographers, and express that
as a percentage of English speakers, and it'll be a pretty small number. I
don't know what you mean by "map users" and "GPS users"; I use maps all the
time, and a friend of mine uses GPS on a regular basis, and neither of us
has ever needed to use the word "datum" in order to use maps or GPS.
I probably should have said "rare outside certain specific fields", but I
thought you were capable of working that one out for yourselves. Accuracy is
useful up to a point, but after that it becomes fruitless pedantry, and,
more importantly, a bore.
A huge number of words have very specific meanings in certain contexts, but
are little used outside of those contexts and little understood by the
population at large. There's no basis for saying that these words are
"common" in absolute terms, just because they are common within those
contexts that you may know about, but the vast majority of people don't.
Mike Lyle
Not one of my more competent pars, was it? The show ended with Buckley
-- oh damn! I've just realized he was Barry Bucknell, not Bill
Buckley; so not one of my more competent recalls, either -- standing
proudly under the ceiling he'd just papered; as he did so, the paper
fell off. A consequence of the effect of studio lights on wallpaper
paste, no doubt; but still not a great advertisement.
I so wish I hadn't got myself mixed up in this double-barreled
blooper.
Mike.
Don Aitken
wrote:
>
>It is a word that has currency in certain specialised fields. Add up all the
>surveyors, people who work with planes, and cartographers, and express that
>as a percentage of English speakers, and it'll be a pretty small number. I
>don't know what you mean by "map users" and "GPS users"; I use maps all the
>time, and a friend of mine uses GPS on a regular basis, and neither of us
>has ever needed to use the word "datum" in order to use maps or GPS.
>
the maps you use. All British Ordnance Survey maps have this note:
"Base map constructed on Transverse Mercator projection, Airy
Spheroid, OSGB (1936) Datum";
and this one:
"Vertical datum mean sea level (Newlyn)"
--
Don Aitken
Mike Lyle
[...]
[..on "datum"...]
> A huge number of words have very specific meanings in certain contexts, but
> are little used outside of those contexts and little understood by the
> population at large. There's no basis for saying that these words are
> "common" in absolute terms, just because they are common within those
> contexts that you may know about, but the vast majority of people don't.
Hmm. If you and I are a random sample, it looks credible that most
educated speakers know the word "datum", even if they rarely need to
use it.
I've got lots of these, and I'm sure you and other AUE readers have at
least as many. Lipid; alkahest; wampum. On the whole, I'd say "datum"
was nearer to my everyday life than those, and I bet you know all of
them.
I'm not at all sure that "the population at large" is a valid sample
for measurement of a word's rarity -- unless, of course, that's the
measure one's chosen to use for a stated purpose, in which case I
couldn't disagree.
Mike.
Skitt
> "rewboss" wrote:
>> "Datum" is a word that is very rarely needed, so it's not surprising
>> few people know it exists.
>
> It's not a rare word at all. Surveyors use it; airplane
> manufacturers, and all the folks who work on the airplanes, use it;
> cartographers and map users use it; GPS users use it; birds use it,
> bees use it; even Pekinese use it....
>
> OK, forget the birds, bees, and Pekinese. It's Noel Coward's fault
> that I got a little carried away.
Hah, but Lithuanians and Letts use it. I know.
> It's still pretty common, albeit in fields you're apparently not
> familiar with. A datum is a reference point from which things are
> measured. Usually, the measurements are fairly large, like surveying
> half a state or building a 747.
I also know from surveying and 747s.
--
Skitt (in SF Bay Area) http://www.geocities.com/opus731/
I speak English well -- I learn it from a book!
-- Manuel (Fawlty Towers)
Tony Cooper
wrote:
>Tony Cooper <tony_co...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<tgv6kvo2rac23qaba...@4ax.com>...
>> On 20 Aug 2003 04:37:04 -0700, mike_l...@yahoo.co.uk (Mike Lyle)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >That's funny. Bill Buckley, btw, in British usage recalls a character
>> >who spent the sixties orand seventies showing live-tv viewers how to
>> >cover up attractive Victorian doors with sheets of hardboard (=
>> >Masonite),
>>
>>
>> >and whose most famous conclusion was all the wallpaper on a
>> >ceiling he'd just done falling on his head.
>> >
>>
>> Try as I might, I cannot figure out what was intended here.
>
>Not one of my more competent pars, was it? The show ended with Buckley
>-- oh damn! I've just realized he was Barry Bucknell, not Bill
>Buckley; so not one of my more competent recalls, either -- standing
>proudly under the ceiling he'd just papered; as he did so, the paper
>fell off. A consequence of the effect of studio lights on wallpaper
>paste, no doubt; but still not a great advertisement.
>
>I so wish I hadn't got myself mixed up in this double-barreled
>blooper.
A completely understandable error. I often confuse quotes from
"Ground Force" with comments by President Bush. Just the other day
Bush said "We will leave no stone unturned to find Saddam" and I
remembered it as Charlie Dimmock talking about building a watercourse
and a small stone dam for the water to flow over.
I do wonder about wallpapering a ceiling, though. I don't think I've
ever seen that.
Dr Robin Bignall
Um, delicious.
Dr Robin Bignall
[..]
>
>I probably should have said "rare outside certain specific fields", but I
>thought you were capable of working that one out for yourselves. Accuracy is
>useful up to a point, but after that it becomes fruitless pedantry, and,
>more importantly, a bore.
>
[..]
>
<rhetorical question>
If you find 'fruitless pedantry' a bore, what on earth *are* you doing
here, old chap?
</rhetorical question>
Dr Robin Bignall
wrote:
It was one of the DIY fashionable fads introduced 20-odd years ago by
Bucknell et al. Even as recently as 1998 (which is when I last saw TV, in
hospital and unable to do anything more productive except sleeping), there
were several programmes ("Changing Rooms" springs to mind, and another with
David Frost introducing the houses of the rich and famous, which some other
clown then gave a guided tour of) all about how one should or must rebuild
and redecorate often to keep up with the Joneses. I thought such programmes
were designed to keep the DIY shops in business, and/or to fill up daytime
TV slots. Most of those DIY cookery programmes (particularly the one(s)
with Ainsley Somebody) seemed to be for the second reason.
rewboss
o0d7kv4d4q6d8uii9...@4ax.com...
It doesn't appear on any maps I use. But that's probably because I'm in
Germany. And those notes don't even appear in German anywhere, or anything
like them. They don't add any useful information (the mere fact that they
are on *all* OS maps gives a clue to the redundant nature of the
information), and I don't even pretend to understand what they mean anyway.
It's just OS saying, "This is a serious map used by all serious map readers
who enjoy meaningless gobbledegook."
Mike Lyle
As Robin says, it was a fad.
While we're on this off topic, do Americans *really* like the
arse-clenchingly vulgar gardens inflicted on them by Charlie Dimmock
and Tommy Walsh? At least Titchmarsh used to infuse a trace of taste
into a dismal concept.
MIke.
Peter Duncanson
wrote:
>On 20 Aug 2003 09:43:48 -0700, mike_l...@yahoo.co.uk (Mike Lyle)
As Mike and Robin have said, it was a fad.
To be pedantic: wallpapering a ceiling was fairly unusual - ceiling-papering
a ceiling was much more common.
Typically a ceiling paper provided a particular texture over [1] which paint
was applied in a suitable colour.
[1] I suppose that since the paint was at a lower altitude than the paper,
which in turn was at a lower altitude than the ceiling, that should be
"under" rather than "over".
--
Peter Duncanson
UK
(posting from a.e.u)
Daniel James
wrote:
> It is a word that has currency in certain specialised fields.
> I probably should have said "rare outside certain specific fields",
I use "datum" regularly - outside of any particular specialized field
- to refer to a single point of information; one of the "data". I do
so because it's a nice handy word that means exactly what I want to
say, and everyone seems to understand what I mean by it.
I find it rather surprising that anyone who is familiar with the word
"data" (whether they use it in the singluar, the plural, or both)
should regard "datum" as unfamiliar. Even the average Sun reader knows
"they do plurals funny in Latin" and won't blink more than twice after
hearing "datum", correctly used in a meanugful context, for the first
time before understanding what it means.
Cheers,
Daniel.
Daniel James
wrote:
> (the mere fact that they are on *all* OS maps gives a clue to the
> redundant nature of the information)
It's only unnecessary to state that while all maps *are* produced to
the same datum. If the information was *not* reproduced on all maps
there would be confusion if the OS ever decided to start producing
maps to a different datum.
> It's just OS saying, "This is a serious map used by all serious
> map readers who enjoy meaningless gobbledegook."
Saying that the map has been measured relative to some accepted frame
of reference is certainly one way to say that the distances and
heights it shows have been measured and not guessed at, yes. It is, at
worst, "meaningFUL gobbledegook", and to those who need to be able to
make accurate measurements it isn't gobbledegook at all.
Cheers,
Daniel.
Tony Cooper
wrote:
>
>While we're on this off topic, do Americans *really* like the
>arse-clenchingly vulgar gardens inflicted on them by Charlie Dimmock
>and Tommy Walsh? At least Titchmarsh used to infuse a trace of taste
>into a dismal concept.
It's interesting to watch them scurry about, but as far as I'm
concerned a few gnomes and a gazing ball (see:
http://tinyurl.com/kq1p ) is quite sufficient.
We also get "Changing Rooms". I don't care for the show, but I like
to watch the ending where they show the owners of the newly decorated
room and the owners stand there in horror and sputter "It's 'orrible!
Put it back!".