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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Venerean sexadecimal?
Message-ID: <339@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Feb-86 20:31:29 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.339
Posted: Fri Feb 14 20:31:29 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Feb-86 05:33:42 EST
References: <1599@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> <6391@utzoo.UUCP> <1112@lsuc.UUCP>
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 48
Summary: 

In article <1112@lsuc.UUCP> msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) writes:

[Quoting Arthur C. Clarke]
>@ *The adjective for the planet Venus presents grave linguistic
>@ problems.  "Venusian" is unacceptable to purists; "Venerean"
>@ raises false expectations; "Cytherean" is correct but no one
>@ except classical scholars understands what it means.  Take
>@ your choice.

The obvious, logical, and beautiful adjective for the planet Venus
is "Venerean", corresponding to Mercurian, Martian, Jovian, and
Saturnian.  "Venusian" is ugly and illogical.  We say "corporeal",
not "corpusial"; "temporal", not "tempusial"; "general", not
"genusial"; "Julian", not "Juliusian"; and so on.  The adjective is
formed from the stem, not from the nominative form.  

> Impurely formed forms are
>commonplace in English; I think it was in "Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins"
>by Theodore M. Bernstein where I saw it pointed out that "scientist" and
>"presidential" should have been "sciencist" and "presidental".  So what?

So Mr. Bernstein doesn't know much Latin.  "Scientist" was derived
(as a neologism, I think) from *scientia*.  "Presidential" was coined
by analogy with "consequential", "influential", "referential", etc.,
which were legitimately formed from Latin words ending in "-entialis".

[Quoting Knuth]
>#The word "hexadecimal", which has crept into
># our language even more recently, is a mixture of Greek and Latin
># stems; more proper terms would be "senidenary" or "sedecimal" or
># even "sexadecimal", but the latter is perhaps too risque for
># computer programmers. 

If Cicero were alive today, he'd turn over in his grave.  Consider
"automobile":  this should be either "autokineton" (which I think is
the modern Greek word) or "ipsimobile".  A true purist will say
"auto" (a suggestive prefix) and never "automobile".  

And, just between (or among) us purists, what a pleasure it is to
look down on all the people who say or write the non-word "normalcy".
I believe this barbarism was coined, fittingly, by Warren G. Harding
("Return to Normalcy").  I had always admired Erich Fromm until I
read his phrase "the pathology of normalcy".  No doubt "normalcy" was
formed by analogy with generalcy, vitalcy, equalcy, legalcy, loyalcy,
qualcy, frugalcy, banalcy, realcy, royalcy, mentalcy, frailcy,
fatalcy, mortalcy, instrumentalcy, and similar words.
-- 
Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes