Comments on: Wednesday’s Word XLIX

By: Nicholas Tam

Nicholas Tam — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 04:48:40 +0000

Being from Canada, instances of "-log" instead of "-logue" are jarring and strange – far more so than other common differences in spelling like -or/-our, and -ter/-tre.

The only exceptions, not surprisingly, are technological. I’m more comfortable with "analog" than "analogue" when it’s used as the adjective that means "the opposite of digital" (as opposed to the noun, i.e. something is analogue of something else), and I think in "dialog boxes", not "dialogue boxes" (probably because all my documentation, manuals, and books on computing/UI are American in origin). So your conjecture in the last paragraph is probably right: even though America is now a literary/publishing superpower, English conventions have a historical traction there that they don’t when it comes to technology.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:17:45 +0000

Hmm, not sure. If it’s anything, I assume it’s Wordpress 2.6-related, though I see no tickets for such a problem in Trac.

By: Conor

Conor — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 05:17:17 +0000

I thought I would mention that the trackback didn’t work, was somehow malformed:

A new comment on the post # "" is waiting for your approval

Author : (IP: , )
E-mail :
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=
Comment:

Nothing I’m stressed about, but thought you should know in case it’s an issue on your end. Can you confirm trackbacks work for other blogs you link to?

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:31:23 +0000

The Greek legein/logos is a powerhouse word. It can mean a shitpile of different things depending on the context. Your sense of "to gather" is evident in catalog, in which the use of logos is tied to the sense of legein as "to count" or "to gather."

By: Conor

Conor — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:59:31 +0000

Fantastic post, as usual. We both know I craft fake etymologies as a hobby, so take this with a grain of salt, but I'd always associated the Greek root legein with "to pick out." This definitely fits the sense of "to speak," but says a lot more. This, from the etymology for logos, might illustrate the point more clearly:

Gk. logos "word, speech, discourse," also "reason," from PIE base *leg- "to collect" (with derivatives meaning "to speak," on notion of "to pick out words"); used by Neo-Platonists in various metaphysical and theological senses and picked up by N.T. writers.

I'd found this out a while back from looking up the etymology for anthology, which gives a meaning, essentially, of "a gathering or collection of flowers." This root, as far as I can see, is shared by logos, legein, lecture, lesen (Ger.), and handfuls of others. OK, now I've lost my train of thought. I really need a preview button!