From: T0Morrow@aol.com
Date: Thu Nov 06 1997 - 08:26:52 MST
Anton, I missed your original post, catching it only via Kennita's response,
so I might have missed some vital context.
I'd written:
>:...The roots "ex" and "tropy" essentially mean "out of" and "disorder."...
to which you responded (at least in part):
> Er, Tom, I think you'll find that _tropy_ means `turning'
Indeed, but it has other, more relevant meanings, too. As Kennita pointed
out, the Greek root also means "transformation." Furthermore, the definition
of the suffixed form "trop-ay" as in "entropy" is "change." Granted that is
not *exactly* "disorder" but I hedged my claim with "essentially" to cover
the gap between literal definition of the root and modern understanding of
its use in the context of "entropy." In the name of Bob, I thus call for
some slack!
Kennita charitably added:
>Both "negentropy" and "extropy" place a Latin prefix on a Greek root
>(yes, "en-" is also Greek), but so what? They get the point across.
My source on Indo-European roots classifies "ex" as a Greek root meaning "out
of, from," so I don't think that "extropy" improperly mixes roots. It is
also a Latin root, with a similar meaning, but that shouldn't throw us.
Tom
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