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