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Author Topic: Why, English language, why?!!  (Read 936 times)

Cobbler89

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Why, English language, why?!!
« on: August 28, 2013, 11:12:36 pm »

There is such a thing as schizocarp. It is not the monster from older versions of Dwarf Fortress.

If you need me I'll be resisting the urge to wail aloud.

(My apologies if this is old news to some people or anything like that.)
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Putnam

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Re: Why, English language, why?!!
« Reply #1 on: August 29, 2013, 01:25:33 am »

And it's pronounced "skizz-a-carp".

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Re: Why, English language, why?!!
« Reply #2 on: August 29, 2013, 06:06:16 am »

Quote from: Oxford English Dictionary Online
schizo-
 1. irreg. representing Greek σχίζειν to split, combining with other words of Greek origin in various scientific terms.

  ˈschizocarp   n. /-kɑːp/  [Greek καρπός fruit] Bot. a term applied to dry fruits which break up into two or more one-seeded mericarps without dehiscing.

Quote from: Oxford English Dictionary Online
carp
Forms:  Also ME–16 carpe. Pl. unchanged, formerly carps.
Etymology:  < Old French carpe (Spanish carpa) < late Latin carpa (Brachet cites Cassiodorus a575 ‘destinet carpam Danubius’). The same name (modified in termination, etc.) appears in Romanic, Celtic, Germanic, and Slavonic: compare especially Old High German charpho, Middle Low German karpe masculine pointing to a possible West Germanic *karpo. But the original source is unknown.

1. A freshwater fish, Cyprinus carpio, the type of the family Cyprinidæ; introduced into England as early as the 14th c., and commonly bred in ponds.

So to answer your question, it's because in English it is tradition for technical biological terms to be in classical Greek; and because the French brought carp-the-fish to England a few centuries after the Norman conquest so we borrowed their word for it.
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