[PLUG-TALK] Why your Latin teacher was wrong

John Jason Jordan johnxj at gmx.com
Mon Sep 10 18:05:30 UTC 2018


On Mon, 10 Sep 2018 07:28:37 -0700 (PDT)
Paul Heinlein <heinlein at madboa.com> dijo:

>On Mon, 10 Sep 2018, Rich Shepard wrote:
>
>>  Example: why do “abjure” and “adjure” have opposite meanings?  
>
>That was is pretty simple: "ab" implies "from" while "ad" implies "to" 
>or "toward." Sort of like offramp and onramp.

And both are prepositions in Latin, readily combined with verbs, nouns
and modifiers, almost always at the beginning of the word. And if the
word started with a consonant the -d and -b assimilated to the
consonant, e.g., ad-caedens 'to(ward)-falling' became English
'accident' (although via French). Because this might create confusion
with two words spelled and pronounced the same but with opposite
meanings we find that the -b of ab assimilated only occasionally.

English borrowed so heavily from Latin that one of my professors at PSU
once remarked 'English no longer borrows from Latin - we can't; we
already borrowed the whole lexicon.'

In previous centuries word etymologies were the first steps in the
nascent field of linguistics, and still lots of fun today. For English
words the most complete reference is the Oxford English Dictionary. You
can access it online at PSU Millar Library or at the Multnomah County
Library.



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