Stock Rants #2: "Polyamory" and word origins.

[kiya]

I was going to write up a bunch of these so I could just reference them later, and then I got distracted by a shiny object and just did the one. And then I was reminded last night, and this is the one that came out last night, so I am storing it.


Okay. I know that you think the "Polyamory is wrong! It should be 'multiamory' or 'polyphilia'! Mixing roots is wrong!" is cute. So here's the deal: you can think it's cute, so long as you turn in your ipsomobile license and accept having your teleopticon privileges revoked.

And maybe it's not "everything associated with a minority group has to go through an extra layer of justification" in its background, and I really need to grow a sense of humor or something (see userpicture), but frankly, the idea that suddenly my bastard whoreson of a language needs to practice stringent root purity is ludicrous. English is a language of Norman knights trying to pick up Saxon barmaids (and all parties involved are fooling around with the Celts on the side because they have sexy syntax) that aggressively pursues other languages to beat them up for their stray vocabulary, and someone's prating on about a coinage having hybrid parentage? Get. Bloody. Real. ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT!


Also, anyone who finds this joke entertaining or worthwhile who also has ever used the so-called 'word' "compersion", which, in addition to sounding like a syndromic disease that is dismissed by the medical establishment as patient hysteria, has no fucking roots at all and is in fact lexical gibberish, needs to be taken out behind the barn and shot, twice, because there is no possible cure for that level of unmitigated damnfoolishness.

Comments

[mindways]

...because com-persion is the opposite of ass-persion? ;)

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Y'know... this made me go researching. Sadly, I don't have an OED subscription available to me, but dictionary.reference.com seems to be helping.

'aspersion' leads to the verb 'asperse' ("1. to attack with false, malicious, and damaging charges or insinuations; slander.
2. to sprinkle; bespatter.
Origin:
1480–90; < L aspersus besprinkled (ptp. of aspergere), equiv. to a- a- 5 + -sper- (comb. form of spar-, var. of sparg- sparge ) + -sus, var. of -tus ptp. suffix

Following those roots gives:

a- 5 
var. of ad-, used: (1) before sc, sp, st (ascend) and (2) in words of French derivation (often with the sense of increase, addition): amass.
Origin:
ME, in some words < MF a- < L ad- prefix or ad prep. (see ad- ), as in abut; in others < L a- (var. of ad- ad- ), as in ascend

and

sparge
–verb (used with object), verb (used without object)
1. to scatter or sprinkle.
–noun
2. a sprinkling.
Origin:
1550–60; < L spargere to sprinkle, scatter

...
So... then on to the 'com' prefix:
a prefix meaning “with,” “together,” “in association,” and (with intensive force) “completely,” occurring in loanwords from Latin (commit): used in the formation of compound words before b, p, m: combine; compare; commingle.
Also, co-, col-, con-, cor-.

Origin:
< L, var. of prep. cum with

Put it all together and you get a word which SHOULD be 'comspersion', but I can accept that 'msp' is a bit unruly, and which means 'with sprinkling' or 'in association with spattering'... which sounds like some of both the better and the worse sex I've had, and like the group dynamics of too many poly situations I've seen and/or been in. ;)

[kiya]

You have officially delighted me.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

/me smiles broadly. :)

(Someday, we must meet. People have been being shocked at me for ages that we don't already know each other.)

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

... or, I'll continue to smile broadly, but retract the no-doubt confusing second statement, as I JUST realized that I was mis-reading your username and you have, as near as I can tell, no reason to know me, or vice versa. :) But hi. ;)