From: KPJ (kpj@sics.se)
Date: Wed Jul 19 2000 - 09:00:28 MDT
It appears as if altamira <altamira@ecpi.com> wrote:
|
|About the Latin words, I dislike pretentiousness. It's not that I have
|anything against using Latin words, or any other sort of word, when it gives
|a clearer or more interesting meaning to what a person is saying. But when
|a person says "domestic canine" instead of "dog" they're not gaining
|anything, and it comes across as pretentious. (canine is derived from the
|Latin caninus) This is just my bias. Maybe some people would prefer
|"domestic canine."
Yes, using for the string "domestic canine" instead of "dog" appears useless
unless one wins something with this generalization. A tame wolf would also
match the label "domestic canine", so if I would like to discuss the society
structure of dogs _and_ wolves, I could write "In the societies of domestic
canines the humans _must_ always belong to a higher rank than the canine."
as it holds for dogs as well as for tame wolves.
As to Latin, just some random factoids one can learn from amateur astronomy:
The Latin word "canis" means "dog". There exist constellations named
Larger Dog = Canis Major, abbreviation CMa
<URL:http://www.astronomical.org/constellations/cma.html>
Smaller Dog = Canis Minor, abbreviation CMi
<URL:http://www.astronomical.org/constellations/cmi.html>
Hunting Dogs = Canes Venatici, abbreviation CVn
<URL:http://www.astronomical.org/constellations/cvn.html>
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