Saturday 4 April 2009

Greek-Latin Hybrid Compounds

Someone once said that nothing good would come from television because it had a mixed Greek-Latin compound for its name. He might have said the same about the automobile. What makes me smile is that "hypercorrection" (or, as the Germans say, "making things worse by making them better") is another such hybrid from which no good comes - except helpful clarification of how people think they should speak.

1 comment:

Typhoeus said...

neonatal, polyvalent, prebiotic, hypertext.

Antisocial, paramilitary, homophobic, neoconservative, pseudo-intellectual, genocidal, cryptofascist, scientologist.