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Jackie
Don't know the other words but Sir Thomas More, famously executed by fat king Hank the eighth, wrote the original Utopia, coining the word from, I believe, Greek roots. 'ou' - meaning no or non or non-existent, and 'topia' meaning place. In essence, he was trying to say that this ideal place he was describing was 'nowhere' or no-place' - it didn't exist.
Because it was supposed to be an ideal place, however, the name he coined for it soon became synonymous with 'perfect place'. Hence dystopia, used as its opposite. For what it's worth, works like 1984 and Brave New World are considered 'dystopic' visions or stories about varieties of dystopia. At least, that's what we were taught in lit crit.
So no, I don't think, in any regular formation of words, that 'u' and 'dys' are used as opposites. It is mere happenstance that they came to be antonyms in this instance.
Of course, perhaps we could start the theory that the 'u' in utopia is a contraction of 'eu', meaning 'good', and that would make the two words more suitable complements to each other. What say you?
cheer
the sunshine warrior
Entire Thread Subject Posted By Posted vocabula archives wwh 12/24/03 02:41 PM Re: vocabula archives Jackie 12/24/03 04:28 PM Re: vocabula archives shanks 12/24/03 05:24 PM revisited shanks 12/24/03 06:05 PM Re: vocabula archives Bingley 12/24/03 05:37 PM ageless wofahulicodoc 12/24/03 06:13 PM Where's that "rolling my eyes" emoticon? AnnaStrophic 12/24/03 09:19 PM
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