Friendly Atheist

I knew there was something that was bugging me about that. But wait, is the prohibition on mixing linguistic elements being overly pedantic? I found this on Wiki:
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Medical roots generally go together according to language: Greek prefixes go with Greek suffixes and Latin Prefixes with Latin Suffixes. Although it is technically considered acceptable to create hybrid words, it is strongly preferred not to mix different lingual roots.
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So “polyamory” would seem to be acceptable, but multiamoraphobia would be a no-no.

A.E. Housman felt the same way about the word “homosexual.” (At least Stoppard has him say something about it “Invention of Love.”)

I was rather confused to see this headline from you in my Google Reader–then I clicked over and all was explained.

(one day, I’ll realize that I don’t have to hit “submit comment” every time I have a crazy thought which, btw, are like std’s..better unshared)

BWAHAHAHAHA!!!! MUST HAVE!!!!

I nearly choked myself laughing at that. Excellent find.

Love, love, love it!!

Now will someone please ban television for the same reason!

Oh my, I laughed for a good 15 minutes. That is just classic.

Multiarmory? Kinda reminds me of the time I couldnt pass up the deal on a new pistol at the gun show. On the way home, my buddies kept bugging me. “Are you going to tell the wife? Are you going to hide it?”

Of course not! marriage is built on trust and honesty. When I got home, I marched right up to my (not a gun lover) wife and said
“Here honey! Look what I bought you!”

She still refers to it as ‘her’ gun, even though she’s never shot it.

That is hilarious! I want it.

Shane, additionally, one can never be too prepared for the zombie apocalypse. It only makes sense for each individual to have their own personal armory!

Three cheers for multiamory and multiarmory!

That’s a beautiful sentiment!

Oh, damn it, beautiful‘s Germanic/Romance…

I was talking about this with someone the other day. It is incredible that some people actually do see this kind of mixing as wrong. I wonder if it correlates with opposition to interracial marriage..

It is true that it is best for Latin word elements to go with other Latin word elements, and it is best for Greek word elements to go with other Greek elements. But when a certain word element was very often used in one of the languages, while its translation in the other language was not very often used, making the word elements match is not so easy. A perfect example is the Greek adverb tele, “far off.” The Greeks used it as a prefix pretty often. But the Latin translation, procul, was never used as a prefix by the Romans. In cases like television (Greek + Latin), I think mixing is a-okay. Proculvision is just weird.

The multiamory is not best for the Latin elements, anyway. Multamory is better according to how Latin word elements normally work (as in multangulus, multanimis, multannus).

Perhaps polyeroticism would be better than polyphilia.

Even the Romans had Graeco-Latin hybrids: antelogium, Pseudocato, salaputtium, protolapsus, drillopota, monoculus, penteloris, euroaquilo, scenofactorius, septidromus, artigraphus, myobarbum, tractomelitus.

I think I saw something about this on television.

Polyphilia is more ethical than polyamory: why limit yourself to only humans, to the exclusion of animals and inanimate things? It's so small-minded.