fun with etymology

[eirias]

Best new word learned today: epizootic - that is, the animal version of an epidemic.

I never realized that the -dem- in epidemic was the familiar -dem- from democracy, demography, etc. Awesome.

Comments

[cognative.livejournal.com]

you're a dork. But that is interesting.
Endemic. Epidemiology. Pandemic. Epidemic. That's all I got.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

You totally have to learn Greek. Or at least take a class in etymology.

But yes, demos = "the people" (somewhat in a racial sense but more in a group/organizational/political sense). And "zoe"="life", hence zoos and whatall. And um, I know a lot more Greek too ;). And er Latin. Perhaps I shall point out to you random etymologies just in case, since I have no idea what you don't know!

(cracy is from "power" or "rule", "graph" you probably know is from "write", "epi" is the preposition "on top of", "en" is "in", "pan" is "all")

[eirias.livejournal.com]

*smile* Thanks! As it turns out, I knew all of those except "epi" (I've seen it in tons of words - epigram, epicycle, epiphenomenon - but wouldn't have been able to give a good definition; I would have been stuck with something like "around"). Are there really courses in etymology? That would be so rad. There's an occasional historical linguistics course at our school, but the rumor is the prof is kind of a tool, and it's an undergrad class anyway, so I'm not all about that.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Prepositions are enigmatic.

Also, Greek prepositions are horrible, evil, hateful little parts of speech. Nightmarish.

As for courses in etymology, there is (or was) at least one because CTY offered it, so I assume there are courses here and there, but I wouldn't know how to find them. Historical linguistics, while wicked-cool in its own way (*drool*), is not really the same thing.