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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
Or buried under the chapel at Rosslyn?
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,004
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,004 |
triskaidekaphobia (or spelling variants) is merely the fear of the number 13
But jheem mentioned dekatriaphobia as the fear if 13. I had never seen that before and merely wondered if there was more to it than just a spelling variation. How does Greek work and under what circumstances is this sort of inversion of affixes/word components allowed?
Thassall
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Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,475
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,475 |
How does Greek work and under what circumstances is this sort of inversion of affixes/word components allowed?
There are two things that lead me to believe that the word was coined by a present-day Greek rather than some classical philologist on her lunch break: the transcription of the words and the inversion of the number morphemes.
First, Friday. The Classical Greeks didn't really have a Friday before they were christianized. So paraskeue: beging pronounced in the odern Greek manner, /paraskevi/. (Note that in words like euthanasia and euphemism, the eu- prefix is pronounced /ju/, not /ef/ like it would be, with the ypsilon becoming an f or v depending on environment.) Now, in Classical Greek, 13 is treis kai deka '3 and 10', but in Modern Greek it's dekatreis (not that the ei diphthong gets reduced to i, so /dekatris/). The order of the morphemes changed during the 2000 year development of Classical Greek to Koine to Modern Greek. I would spell treiskaidekaphobia with the ei intact, but others reduce it. Hope that helps.
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
That's the most popular alternate theory. We must read the same books, Pfranz.
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Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,230
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,230 |
Did your post wind up in this thread because you were being harried by a mysterious albino, Bob?
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