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There's a word, used disparagingly, meaning "combining Greek and Latin roots in the same word. Does anyone recall it? Thanks.


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Just wanted to welcome you to our forum Padorak. I can't help you but I am sure one of the members will be able to come up with something.



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I think Fowler called them hybrids. Somebody, I forget who, called them abominations: "Television is an abomination, half Latin and half Greek. No good will come of this device."

Bingley


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Yes, Bingley, Fowler did indeed call them hybrids. And he adds the following:

" … a few remarks … may perhaps instil caution, and a conviction that word-making, like other manufactures, should be done by those who know how to do it. Others should neither attempt it for themselves, nor assist the deplorable activities of amateurs by giving currency to fresh coinages before there has been time to test them."

We have been warned!


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we have been warned!

Yes, but 'amateur' means one who loves their work

Guilty as charged, and I shall continue my reckless pursuit of fashionable fishes and other linguistic lapses


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>..I shall continue ..<
Hi Mav,
I very much hope you will! The struggle between "amateurs" and "professionals" is probably as old as mankind (see e.g. in music and photography). It is connected with the question: Is earning money detrimental to creativity? (This one might divide people along the Atlantic)


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(This one might divide people along the Atlantic)

Heyyy, what to you mean by that?

I believe that a creative person will be so whether he is being paid or not. Is an amateur better, or more noble, because he is unpaid. If so, why. It seems to me that this is a sort of reverse snobism.

Was not Einstein, or Marie Curie, creative even though they were being paid? Is a photographer that sells a picture any less creative than one that takes them and hangs them in his hall.

Tell me, do you believe I think this way simply because I am from Canada and thus across the Atlantic?




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>Was not Einstein, or Marie Curie, creative even though they were being paid? <

Hi belMarduk,
I expected exactly this sort of reaction! I agree about the reverse snobism. Alas this is rather widespread in Europe. Biographies of Einstein and Marie Curie (besides van Gogh etc) never omit to mention the material hardship suffered by these paradigms of creativity! And if an artist is known to make money with his works, suspicion mounts as to his/her true creativity. This even extended to Charlie Chaplin, when he came back to Europe. Last Sunday I visited an exhibition of works by Andy Warhol near my home. The commentary provided stressed that he was a "commercial artist".
Of course, like with all generalizations about regional differences, you can always find exceptions.



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Is earning money detrimental to creativity?

Mark Twain had some relevant comments to make along these lines (or parallel ones, perhaps) in Tom Sawyer. It was the incident where Tom is set to whitewash the back fence, and manages to inveigle all of his friends and acquaintances to do the work - and pay to do it - by making out that it was an artistic oeuvre, not work.

Twain goes on to set out the differneces between amateur and professional, and boils it down to whether one is paid or not - the actual task and the quality of its execution, remain constant.


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Hey all

In reply to:

Is earning money detrimental to creativity?



I suspect we've left the River Lexicon to embark upon the Gulf of Philosophy here, but so what. Let the wind take us where it will.

I do not believe this statement can be answered with 'yes', or 'no', since the response you make will almost certainly be influenced by the assumptions you have made. Just because someone works, and earns money by it, does not mean that the earning of money is the key motivator.

The problem is the logically fallacious segue that so many people make between the money as the means (the end being the art), and money as the end (the means being the art). If the former, I can't see creativity suffering. If the latter, certainly you are more likely to get Joan Collins than James Joyce.

Another issue to consider is the romantic (but not easily dismissed) idea that suffering somehow helps inspire artists, but I'll leave that to other posters...

cheer

the sunshine warrior


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