Re: German and Russian adjectives

Neeraj Mathur wrote:
>
> "Joachim Pense" <spam-collector@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:dic6t4$cno$01$3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Neeraj Mathur:
> >> Exactly - all I was saying was that the feature of Indo-European in
> >> question had been conserved without change.
> >>
> >
> > So the word "artifact" was just misleading to me, (with Latin as first
> > foreign language). Would "Relic" be a valid replacement for "artifact"
> > here?
>
> Yes, exactly.

Where "relic form" _is_ a technical term.

> (I think it probably stems from museums, where the word 'artifact' transfers
> its meaning from those items on display that were fashioned by humans to
> just anything of historical interest that is exhibited; thus 'artifact' just
> means something that is old and has survived in popular speech, while the
> more Latinate meaning 'made by design' is very, very restricted; Peter has
> mentioned the other idiom, where 'artifact' means 'made artificially'.)

But a relic is usually something that's old _and holy_.

There's a huge mausoleum in a Catholic cemetery in Chicago that has
panel after panel of relics along the corridors of crypts, and each
panel has lots and lots of saints' relics -- each of them the size of a
pinhead, maybe, labeled fragments of bone of this or that saint.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: German and Russian adjectives
    ... Neeraj Mathur: ... found in Sanskrit and Greek all over the place. ... may I ask you to please explain the meaning of the word "artifact" ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: German and Russian adjectives
    ... > Neeraj Mathur: ... the use of a neuter adjective as an adverb is an Indo-European ... >> artifact, found in Sanskrit and Greek all over the place. ... another sense of the word meaning something _artificial_ that isn't ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: German and Russian adjectives
    ... > Neeraj Mathur: ... > So the word "artifact" was just misleading to me, (with Latin as first ... (I think it probably stems from museums, where the word 'artifact' transfers ... more Latinate meaning 'made by design' is very, ...
    (sci.lang)