Date: Fri, 2 Jan 1998 18:09:52 -0500

From: Gregory {Greg} Downing downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU

Subject: Re: Deletia (Was Re: Dilbert for WOTY?)



At 03:15 PM 1/2/98 -0500, you (Larry Horn laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU ) wrote:

And yes, one WOULD expect "deleta", as in "excreta" (I may have also heard

"secreta"), but for some reason it's "deletia" we get.





Hey, if we had to use, in English, only Latin- and Greek-based words that

were morphologically well formed according to those two langs' "classical"

grammars, we'd have to dump everything from "megaton" (megalo- is the

combining form) to maybe about a quarter of the Latin-Greek macaronic combos

that populate the pages of a contemporary medical dictionary! (He said, not

meaning in any way to start up the traditional descriptivist/prescriptivist

mud-wrestle and gotcha-contest.)



Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu