Adjective with society
Petibacsi
Societian? That would be the form but never heard of it, like societian
evolution.
CaseyKCKC
societal
Karen
Petibacsi
We have 4 contenders so far:
Petibacsi : societian
Karen : societal
Ellen : social
Webster : society (no kidding!)
I like the first 2 the best, social means something different IMHO.
Oh guess what? I looked up in the online Webster and it says that the
adjective form is the same as the noun.
The beauty of English, not to mention the lack of authority :) !
Petibacsi
Other cultural and societal subjects
So Karen is the winner. The price is let's see, did she also know the
opposite of used to ? :)
John Davies
<peti...@aol.comic> writes
> How can we make an adjective from the noun society?
>
>evolution.
Any decent dictionary will list several related adjectives, together
with their definitions. Look under "society": adjectives are usually
marked "adj."
--
John Davies (jo...@redwoods.demon.co.uk)
spamgirl
Petibacsi wrote:
> How can we make an adjective from the noun society?
>
> Societian? That would be the form but never heard of it, like societian
> evolution.
--
Turn that frown upside down!
http://internettrash.com/users/spamgirl/
"A Diamond in the Rough"
Petibacsi
>societal
I agree with you and Karen and I found already a case when it was used like
that, nevertheless Webster thinks that the adjective form of society is
society.
So we have a clear case when logic and usage clearly contradict Webster. So
should I write a letter to the editor. And just how did they decide that
society can also be an adjective? Who gave them the rigth?
JUST AN H
I've seen "societal" as an adjective for "society but only infrequently and
always in a negative sense. "Societal ills," "societal woes," etc, etc.
"Society" as an adjective is encountered much more frequently, but seems
old-fashioned and somewhat pretentious. For example, "Society ball."
Without consulting the dictionary, I'm wondering if "social" might not be the
most suitable adjective for "society?"
J.
Patronius
>society.
It can be. For example, "What kind of girl is she?" "She's a society girl."
When you look under "society" in the dictionary, you'll find the various ways
in which that particular word can be used (along with some ways in which it can
be modified). That doesn't mean it's the right word to use for your intended
purpose.
"Societal" and "social" are also perfectly good adjectives, but they have
different meanings, serve different purposes, and can be found elsewhere in the
dictionary.
--P. C.
(remove "55" from address to send E-mail)
CaseyKCKC
CaseyKCKC
(about societal)
>>
>> I agree with you and Karen and I found already a case when it was used
>like
>>that, nevertheless Webster thinks that the adjective form of society is
>>society.
>>
>> So we have a clear case when logic and usage clearly contradict Webster.
>So
>>should I write a letter to the editor. And just how did they decide that
>>society can also be an adjective? Who gave them the rigth?
>>
>
>I've seen "societal" as an adjective for "society but only infrequently and
>always in a negative sense. "Societal ills," "societal woes," etc, etc.
I think "societal" is used mostly by sociologists and their ilk. It need not
be a negative reference - e.g., "societal norms." I have a feeling that it is
a fairly recent word. To my ears, it often sounds pompous and pretentious --
or is that just the kind of people who say "societal"?
>
>"Society" as an adjective is encountered much more frequently, but seems
>old-fashioned and somewhat pretentious. For example, "Society ball."
I agree, and I think "society" is used as the adjective for "society" *only*
when the reference is to "high" society, as in the example you gave. A letter
to the editor is in order!
>
>Without consulting the dictionary, I'm wondering if "social" might not be the
>most suitable adjective for "society?"
It often is. The problem is, "social" has been around for so long, that it has
acquired a range of meanings of its own, and paired with certain nouns it has
certain very specific meanings: social disease, social dancing, church social
(here it is transformed into a noun).
"Social" and "society" come from related Latin words (which, of course, share a
common ancestor), and until recently society saw no need to coin an adjective
directly from "society" since "social" was adequate in most circumstances. At
least, that's my take on it.
Karen
Petibacsi
>Before you write a letter,
Oh I was just kidding with that one.
>It's their book. They have the right to put whatever they like in
>it.
We got back to my pet project, the authorithy question. :)
>Peti, I'm curious.
Don't worry, you are not alone.
>On the one hand you seem to like to invent new words
>("societian",
Actually I screwed up that one. I made an other noun from society instead of
an adjective.Societal would have been the logical choice.
> "goddesslessness")
That's a perfectly legitim word. :)
>, yet at the same time you seem to
>feel there's a problem with the fact that no one is vested with the
>authority to decide how English words can be used.
Well, these are 2 different things. One is how can brand new words made and
the other is how adjectives can be made from nouns by suffix.
> This seems contradictory.
No, see above, 2 different problems.
>You evidently like playing with language --
I actually prefer to play with you. :)
surely
>you wouldn't like it if someone was telling you you weren't allowed
>to use words in whatever way you like?
See, when I figured out there was no authorithy in English concerning
grammar, than I thought, hey my bad English is just as good as the Queen's!
>It also makes me wonder what happens with Hungarian. Is there an
>"authority" which rules on usage?
I think I explained it earlier. The language department of the Hungarian
Scientific Academy gives advises with new problems and it also publishes a
little (200 pages) grammar rule book, what we used in school.
So it is not up to each publisher houses to decide how grammar should be
interpreted.
I guess it is the same in France.
spamgirl
> >spamgirl:
> >societal
>
> I agree with you and Karen and I found already a case when it was used like
> that, nevertheless Webster thinks that the adjective form of society is
> society.
Oxford said societal :)
> So we have a clear case when logic and usage clearly contradict Webster. So
> should I write a letter to the editor. And just how did they decide that
> society can also be an adjective? Who gave them the rigth?
Grin... didn't got write webster's dictionary too? :)
Pk2222
>
Nope: that was old Dan'l Webster, who beat the devil in a fiddling contest.
pk
Opinicus
>Nope: that was old Dan'l Webster, who beat the devil in a fiddling
contest.
Bob
Istanbul
---
To reply by email, dot the dash in doruk-net.
janelaw
>
> Pk2222 wrote in message <19981202131317...@ng-ch1.aol.com>...
> >Nope: that was old Dan'l Webster, who beat the devil in a fiddling
> contest.
> I thought it was a courtroom confrontation.
>
> Bob
> Istanbul
>
>
Okay, I think we're confusing Benet and Daniels here.
Petibacsi
>Adjectives can end in -tian.
You are right. Somehow the word pedestrian came to my mind when I was making
up societan.
Now guess what? Pedestrian also can be an adjective, with a meaning of:
commonplace, unimaginative
(There is even a word pedestrianism, what doesn't mean the characteristic of
being unimaginative, but the fondness of walking)
> There is the Martian language, for
>instance. The problem with "societian" is the risk of spitting
>all over your audience when you try to say it.
The problem of pronounciation was not the subject here, but if the word
grammatically-logically was a correct one or not.
>> > "goddesslessness")
>>
>> That's a perfectly legitim word. :)
>I think it's extremely ugly. :-)
Again, the subject here was, if the word has a real meaning or not, not the
beauty of the word.
>You mean, your ideal authority would have jurisdiction over the latter
>but not over the former?
Yes. I cut it off, so again, the 2 similar but different subjects are:
1. Making up new words from thin air. This is entirely up to usage.I think the
movie Wayne's World was very successful at it. Writers can do it too, and if
the word becomes widely used, it will be part of the English language.
2. Affixiation. (Now I made up this word, but I think it is quite legitime.) It
means the making up of new words by altering already existing words with
suffixes, prefixes. So here we just follow the general logical-grammar
tradition how we can make for example from a noun an adjective. So technically
societan could also be good, but societal is more common/acceptable, and we
don't need 2 words for the same idea(made from the same root).
It is like atheist,atheistic and atheistical. All 3 can be used as an
adjective with the same meaning so I don't see why the first and shortest one
shouldn't be used and I think the other 2 should be avoided.
>To be honest, they don't seem very different to me
I think I cleared that on up above.
>Many people (I'm one) think the Queen's way of speaking is extremely ugly.
Again, you didn't address the subject. It was the grammatical correctness of
her language not the beauty of it. :)
>It doesn't work very well anymore in France. The people will insist
>on talking about le sandwich and le weekend and so on. I don't know
>whether the Hungarian Scientific Academy has this problem?
First, let's see the above atheist/atheistic/atheistical example. In this
case the HSA probably would advise to use the first form and try to avoid the
next 2.
Now of course every language who comes into contact with English (by
computer/movies/business) sooner or later adopt quite a few of its words,
simply becasue those are simpler/shorter/etc.
Some people think of this process as a bad thing and losing the national
identity by it, I think it is just one step forward to the worldlanguage.
Specially in computer technic, the English words are so much shorter than
the Hungarian equivalents (and I guess it is the same with German) that simple
it is a pain to try to translate them. For example:
File: adatbazis
Harddisk: merevlemezes memoria
Floppydisk: hajlekony lemezes adattarolo
etc.etc.etc.
The only problem what I see is with the adoption of the English words is the
pronounciation.
Instead of file, we would write fajl in Hungarian. And actually it is a big
problem how to hungarianicize (perfectly legitime word) foreigner words without
the inability to recognize them in the original language.
We have had the word vikend in our vocabulary for a long time, and I think
you could guess that it means weekend.
John Davies
<jus...@aol.com> writes
>Without consulting the dictionary, I'm wondering if "social" might not be the
>most suitable adjective for "society?"
I am astonished by the frequency with which contributors to this
newsgroup express a reluctance to use a dictionary to answer some
trivial question like the one above.
At first I thought it might be an expression of the macho idea that
getting facts from a book is something only girls and cissies do, and
that real men either know the answer to everything or can invent
plausible explanations if they don't; but recently there have been
cases of female contributors making similar comments, so it can't be
that. Is there some new religion which regards dictionaries as immoral
or heretical? Or is there a more mundane explanation, such as ignorance
of the mysteries of alphabetical order?
--
John Davies (jo...@redwoods.demon.co.uk)
Petibacsi
>newsgroup express a reluctance to use a dictionary to answer some
>trivial question like the one above.
Because we lost our beliefs in dictionaries long time ago. If you followed
this thread you should know that Oxford and Webster clearly contradict on the
subject.
Also some of us have no life, so we feel like being i na club. :)
janelaw
>
>
>
> Did Wayne's World introduce new words? Weren't they just using
> expressions that were already current amoung the young? I only saw
> a few episodes of the TV series, didn't see the movie.
This is a complicated question. The WW jargon was largely in
use on the street before the movie, but the movie derived from
an ongoing SNL skit. IIRC, it was not so much individual words
that WW made commonplace so much as entire lines of dialogue.
>
> A lot of new words come not from writers but from the street --
> diss, for instance, which is very useful in casual conversation.
>
>
I've been wondering about this lately. I never heard my kid say
"my bad" before I heard it on Buffy. OTOH, she told me last
night that the cat "freewillingly" did a back flip chasing a
moth. I think the young are just more creative in their
speech. Some of it catches on.
jane
Petibacsi
>You thought you made it up. :-) It's affixation -- the act of affixing.
I know now. I was writting a post on it and just in case, I looked up in the
dictionary, and there it was. Man, I was disappointed! But that was my point
too, if we apply certain logic to the fprming of new words, by sheer common
sense we will get to the same new words or we can figure out what a new word
means by examining its roots.
>There is nothing to be gained by
>eliminating words.
Bandwidth. :)
>I would probably not miss "atheistic", but I feel the need of both
>"atheist" and "atheistical".
IMHO atheistic and atheistical are exactly the same.
>Although I wouldn't use "atheistical" myself, since I don't disapprove
>of atheism,
That's a rather silly argument. Can't you use it for describing somebody?
:)
>> problem how to hungarianicize (perfectly legitime word)
>I bet it's not the one that's actually used though. What is the real
>Hungarian word for it?
I made it too long. :)
It should be Hungarianize, although my dictionary says Magyarize. :)
Came to my mind, what is the word for making a foreigner word fitting the
English language? Englicize?
John Davies
<$news1$@nospam.demon.co.uk> writes
>John Davies (jo...@redwoods.demon.co.uk) wrote:
>> In article <19981201202600...@ng08.aol.com>, JUST AN H
>> <jus...@aol.com> writes
>> >Without consulting the dictionary, I'm wondering if "social" might not be the
>> >most suitable adjective for "society?"
>>
>> newsgroup express a reluctance to use a dictionary to answer some
>> trivial question like the one above.
>>
>> getting facts from a book is something only girls and cissies do, and
>> that real men either know the answer to everything or can invent
>> plausible explanations if they don't; but recently there have been
>> cases of female contributors making similar comments, so it can't be
>> that. Is there some new religion which regards dictionaries as immoral
>> or heretical? Or is there a more mundane explanation, such as ignorance
>> of the mysteries of alphabetical order?
>
>of thinking, Usenet wouldn't be much fun.
On the contrary, it would be more fun, because we wouldn't have to wade
through such oceans of trivial crap in search of something interesting.
>
>I can't speak for anyone else, but I like hearing what others think
>about words, I like hearing the anecdotes with which they illustrate
>their replies, I like laughing at their witticisms. I like hearing
>others' questions about words and usage, too. I often do go off
>to my own dictionary and look it up, frequently acquiring new bits
>of information in the course of doing so.
Amen to all that, but it's not relevant to the point I made.
>
>
>Implicit in your question (IMO) is the assumption that all the
>questioner wants is an authoritative answer to the question.
I neither assumed nor implied any such thing, though the enquirer who
started this thread gave every appearance of wanting a straightforward
answer such as might be found in any decent dictionary. I am simply
astonished that someone can invite or express an opinion on a point of
English usage without bothering to find out first what the conventional
wisdom on that point is. If I may draw a reasonably close analogy, it's
rather like someone discussing the adequacy of the train service from
London to Brighton without knowing how often the trains actually run.
Wouldn't it be reasonable to ask such a person to first look in the
bloody timetable?
>
>I'm curious, John. Are you a teacher, by any chance? :-)
What a curious question: a hint of the argumentum ad hominem, if I'm
not mistaken. No, I'm not, have not been, and sincerely hope I never
shall be. As no doubt do the kids in my neighbourhood.
--
John Davies (jo...@redwoods.demon.co.uk)
John Davies
>> >I can't speak for anyone else, but I like hearing what others think
>> >about words, I like hearing the anecdotes with which they illustrate
>> >their replies, I like laughing at their witticisms. I like hearing
>> >others' questions about words and usage, too. I often do go off
>> >to my own dictionary and look it up, frequently acquiring new bits
>> >of information in the course of doing so.
>>
>> Amen to all that, but it's not relevant to the point I made.
>
>dictionary instead of to a.e.u., occasions for enlightenment
>and amusement would be removed from the newsgroup.
[...]
>
>> I am simply
>> astonished that someone can invite or express an opinion on a point of
>> English usage without bothering to find out first what the conventional
>> wisdom on that point is. If I may draw a reasonably close analogy, it's
>> rather like someone discussing the adequacy of the train service from
>> London to Brighton without knowing how often the trains actually run.
>> Wouldn't it be reasonable to ask such a person to first look in the
>> bloody timetable?
>
[...]
To summarise:
My position is that well-informed discussion is preferable to ill-
informed discussion. You think it's the other way round.
Your position is that ill-informed discussion is preferable to no
discussion at all. I agree with that where the facts are not easily
established, but not in the case we're discussing, which concerns the
use of dictionaries.
To put your position at its simplest: "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis
folly to be wise." I disagree.
Once again, we shall have to agree to differ.
--
John Davies (jo...@redwoods.demon.co.uk)
Pk2222
Not necessarily....I was being a smart aleck when I referred to Steven Vincent
Binet's short story "The Devil and Daniel Webster", but Webster was one of the
most powerful and effective lawyers of his time (1782-1852. He won at least six
important constitutional issue in Supreme Court cases.
OK, I plead ignorance. Who is Daniels? Did he get Ol' Scratch in the courtroom?
pk
janelaw
>
>
> OK, I plead ignorance. Who is Daniels? Did he get Ol' Scratch in the courtroom?
>
> pk
I was referring to the old Charlie Daniels Band song, "The Devil
Went Down to Georgia." He and a boy named Johnny had a fiddling
contest. Johnny could either win a fiddle made of gold or lose
his soul. He won (Fire on the mountain, run boys run. Devil's
in the house of the rising sun. Chickens in the breadpan,
picking out dough. Granny does your dog bite? No, child, no).
I'm dating myself again, aren't I?
jane
Alice Turner
Ellen Mizzell <$news1$@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:7499a3$1...@tictac.demon.co.uk...
>janelaw (jan...@mailexcite.com) wrote:
>>
>> I was referring to the old Charlie Daniels Band song, "The Devil
>> Went Down to Georgia." He and a boy named Johnny had a fiddling
>> contest. Johnny could either win a fiddle made of gold or lose
>> his soul. He won (Fire on the mountain, run boys run. Devil's
>> in the house of the rising sun. Chickens in the breadpan,
>> picking out dough. Granny does your dog bite? No, child, no).
>>
>
>I remember that.
You can see where some of that early Dylan came from. Different, beat,
different mood, different intent, same logic. He grew up on Charlie Daniels
and the like.
Alice
JUST AN H
>Went Down to Georgia." He and a boy named Johnny had a fiddling
>contest. Johnny could either win a fiddle made of gold or lose
>his soul. He won (Fire on the mountain, run boys run. Devil's
>in the house of the rising sun. Chickens in the breadpan,
>picking out dough. Granny does your dog bite? No, child, no).
>
>
>jane
Not really, Jane. I looked it up, and was surprised to find that "Devil Went
Down to Georgia" reached #3 on the charts in July, 1979. I thought the song
was much older than that.
J.
Pk2222
>different mood, different intent, same logic. He grew up on Charlie Daniels
>and the like.
Then *what* happened to Dylan? Yech.
pk
<ducking and remembering "Daniels" as "CDB">