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Morning Open Thread. In re: Professor Funning flagrantly flails philology. [1]

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Date: 2022-08-06

“I've found that child's play -stuff that was not considered serious, but goofy- was the stuff I liked to do, so I still do it as an adult.” ― Matt Groening

Online Etymology Dictionary:

re- word-forming element meaning "back, back from, back to the original place;" also "again, anew, once more," also conveying the notion of "undoing" or "backward," etc. c. 1200, from Old French re- and directly from Latin re- an inseparable prefix meaning "again; back; anew, against." The many meanings in the notion of "back" give re- its broad sense-range: "a turning back; opposition; restoration to a former state; "transition to an opposite state." From the extended senses in "again," re- becomes "repetition of an action," and in this sense it is extremely common as a formative element in English, applicable to any verb.

Oh yeah? So, as a prefix, “re-” means repeating something. Cool. I can’t repeat myself because I don’t peat myself.

Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum. This is a post where you can come to share what’s on your mind and stay for the expansion. The diarist is on California time and gets to take a nap when he needs to, or may just wander off and show up again later. So you know, it's a feature, not a bug. Grab your supportive indulgence(s) of choice and join us, please. And if you’re brand new to Morning Open Thread, then Hail and Well Met, new Friend.

Why is it you can fill your water bottle, drink it all, go refill it, and rehearse your speech, but you can’t hearse a speech?

Play a good movie, replay it over and over because you respect it so much, but you never spected it to begin with?

Turn the pages of a book, reading and rereading by returning to those pages, but people look at me weird if I say this morning is so beautiful I’m joiceing in it?

*****

I love words, I’m pretty good at talking and fair to middling at writing, and so I study words a bit.

If you take the Greek roots directly in one sense, then philology is “love of words”, ‘philo’ meaning love and ‘logo’ meaning word.

Some words can sure be strange, because in fact they’re not real words (at least, as verbs) except in their re-iterative state. So, a few more things you can never do in the first place but you can re-do time and time again:

gard

frain

lieve

lax

alize

fute

pune

pudiate

flect

gret

mit

sonate

tract

volve

monstrate

novate

ciprocate

gress

proach

ject

gulate

Strictly speaking, what I’m doing here is not philology, which is

more commonly defined as the study of literary texts as well as oral and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning

but rather morphology (linguistics),

the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes.

But, heh heh, “philology” worked in the alliteration. Thoroughly truly terrible, I know.

So, as to why so many words start with re-, but don’t stand alone without the prefix, I found this:

Grammarphobia.com Does the prefix “re-” have a dark side? In Latin, the original sense of “re-” was “back” or “backwards,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. But in English, the OED adds, “in the large number of words in which it occurs it shows various shades of meaning.” [one of those senses]: (1) Back from a point reached, or back to or towards a starting point. This meaning can be seen in “reproach” which in Anglo-Norman meant “to recall (something disagreeable to someone),” the OED says. This sense is also in “reflect,” “reduce,” “recede,” “recur,” “refer,” “resilient,” “reluctant,” “refuge,” “retract,” “revoke,” “recall,” “resonate,” “repel,” “recuse,” “rescind,” “remove,” “respect” (literally, to look back), “remit” (to send back), and “reclaim.” … As the OED points out, the meaning of “re-” isn’t always clearly defined, and in many cases new meanings have arisen and obscured the originals. That’s only to be expected, because words with the “re-” prefix have been in English since the early 1200s. And words can undergo lots of changes in 800 years.

Too many words, though, can have a sickening effect, so I’ll leave off here.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/6/2109489/-Morning-Open-Thread-In-re-Professor-Funning-flagrantly-flails-philology

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