| 词组 | etymological fallacy |
| 释义 | etymological fallacy Etymological fallacy is a term used by philologists and linguists to describe the insistence that a word in present-day English derived from a foreign (and especially Greek or Latin) word must have the same meaning as the foreign word or must have its meaning limited in some way. Such insistence has long been popular with many usage writers, from Richard Grant White 1870 and earlier right down to the present. The appeal to etymology is a very seductive one, especially to those who know a little Latin or Greek. You will find the etymological fallacy mentioned in quite a few of the articles in this book. One thing to remember when you read or hear someone insisting that an English word must have a certain meaning because of its Latin or Greek roots is that these insisters apply their etymologies very selectively. You will find few of them who object to December being used for the twelfth month, when its Latin root means "ten," or to manure being used as a noun meaning "dung" when it originally was a verb meaning "to work (land) by hand." So when you read, for example, that caption must refer to matter above a picture because it comes from Latin caput "head," keep manure in mind. |
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