[net.nlang] Venerean sexadecimal?

msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) (02/12/86)

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msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) (02/12/86)

T Cox (sphinx!benn(!)) put the following footnote to an article
in net.columbia:

> > *The 'correct' adjective to refer to Venus is 'venereal.'  The
> > 'word' 'venusian' was coined by the popular press, who were
> > too embarassed by the real word.  I guess that's how words are 
> > born.

Richard Snell (utzoo!snell) responded in this vein:

> According to the Compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (which
> is not really compact at all...), the four distinct meanings of venereal 
> all relate to either sexual activity, lasciviousness, or genitalia.
> ... There are no meanings associated with the planet Venus, 
> though the etymological origin is the goddess of love, Venus.

But one of the examples (from 1652) is "Pronouncing the man ... to be
saturnine, jovial, martial, solar, venereal, mercurial, lunar?".
It may be astrology, but the reference obviously IS to the planet.
Notice the Ptolemaic order of the "planets", incidentally.

On this point I'd like to quote another footnote.  This one is in
Arthur C. Clarke's 1968 book "The Promise of Space", on page 233
(hardcover).

@ *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.

Since he asked, my choice is "Venusian".  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?

And here's another nice one.  (Hello, net.math readers, you still with me?
Anybody claiming THIS isn't math?)  In volume 2 of D.E.Knuth's The Art of
Computer Programming, sec. 4.1 (page 168 in 1st edition), we read:

# Modern readers of Phillips's [1936] article will perhaps be
# surprised to discover that a radix-8 number system was properly
# referred to as "octonary" or "octonal", according to all dictionaries
# of the English language at that time, just as the radix-10 number
# system is properly called either "denary" or "decimal"; the word
# "octal" did not appear in English language dictionaries until 1961,
# and it apparently originated as a term for the "base" of a certain
# class of vacuum tubes.  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.

Mark Brader
P.S. Let's not have a spate of followup articles that just say whether
     each of the various forms is in each of your various favorite
     dictionaries.  Any followups that there are will go to net.nlang only.

carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (02/15/86)

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