Re: death of un negation prefix

From: Ron Hardin (rhhardin_at_mindspring.com)
Date: 08/31/04 

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 02:05:21 GMT

Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
> How far are you willing to take this? Take the word "inegalitarian"
> (1940). The positive is "egalitarian" (1885). To get that back to
> Latin, you have to go through French, which formed their word from a
> different word ("égalité", equality) that they borrowed from Latin
> "aequalitas". Are you really claiming that their was a negated word
> in Latin that mean "inegalitarian"?
>
> Or take "illiquid" (1913), which means "not being cash or readily
> convertable into cash". I tend to doubt that the sense had been used
> in Latin and was only rediscovered in the 20th century.

Yes, French seems to be a problem. I have a helper working collecting
other exceptions. 

-- 
Ron Hardin
rhhardin@mindspring.com
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

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