posted
I would argue that if there's a longer way to say it, then the shorter way to say it is an abbreviated version, regardless of how common the usage is.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
That's not what abbreviation means. An abbreviation is a *specifically shortened* form intended to stand in for the other, not just a word with a pretty much completely independent existence that happens to be the same as the starting letters of another pair of words that can be used in roughly the same situations. Intent is extremely important.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
abbreviate [əˈbriːvɪˌeɪt] vb (tr) 1. to shorten (a word or phrase) by contraction or omission of some letters or words 2. to shorten (a speech or piece of writing) by omitting sections, paraphrasing, etc. 3. to cut short [from the past participle of Late Latin abbreviāre, from Latin brevis brief] abbreviator n
posted
Exactly! "To shorten" is an action taken with intent. If you're not shortening anything, but just using a form that happens to be a prefix, you're not abbreviating.
For instance, I'm not "shortening" masterpiece when I say master, despite the latter being a prefix of the former.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Glenn, gender as a noun is different from gender as a verb. What you've said is correct, that one of the meanings of the word is more broad than the idea of sex, but it's not "due to language education" and it's not related to the verb gender.
Gender used to, and still does, mean a kind or class. It's related to the French word genre, which we also use in the sense of "sort" or "class."
The usage of gender to mean male or female dates from the 15th century, almost as old as the original word in English. So though it did arise later, it wasn't a recent invention due to prudishness, although that usage did become much more common in the 20th century to distinguish it from the word sex.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Fugu: Where "exactly" does the definition I gave say anything about intent? What you are claiming, essentially, is that LOL is no longer an abbreviation, because there are people who now use it without understanding what it's an abbreviation of. Ignorance doesn't make it any less an abbreviation.
Annie, I didn't give a timeline, but essentially we're in agreement. The original use for gender as "male" or "female" was as a class of words, to describe male and female words in romance languages. As to whether it's a "recent invention," that depends on what you call recent, but it doesn't appear to date prior to the 20th century to refer to a person's sex.
From the Online Etymological dictionary:
quote:As sex took on erotic qualities in 20c., gender came to be the common word used for "sex of a human being," often in feminist writing with reference to social attributes as much as biological qualities; this sense first attested 1963.
quote:Fugu: Where "exactly" does the definition I gave say anything about intent? What you are claiming, essentially, is that LOL is no longer an abbreviation, because there are people who now use it without understanding what it's an abbreviation of. Ignorance doesn't make it any less an abbreviation.
To answer your first question, here's where it says something about intent:
quote:to shorten
You can't do that without intent. It isn't possible.
As for LOL, if at some point it stops being used as an abbreviation, then I will be claiming that. Right now pretty most people are using it as an intentional abbreviation, I feel, even if they'd be unlikely to type the full version.
But how about another example: "okay". Okay is a word, and an entirely standalone word with its own meaning. It was virtually certainly an abbreviation at some point, but there's nobody alive now who knows for sure what of. I wouldn't call it an abbreviation at all today, because that requires several billion people (it's a loan word in pretty much every large country; that silly pair of syllables turned out to be a remarkably compelling linguistic tidbit) to be abbreviating (shortening) something most of them don't even know ever had a long form, and not a single person of whom knows what the long form it may once have had ever was. And that's just a little absurd for me. At some point, words stop being abbreviations.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
