Just Plain Wrong

Earlier today Terminal Student showed me a t-shirt that has an important message.  The message on the shirt reads:

Polyamory
is
Wrong!

...but the back of the shirt reads:

It is either
Multiamory or
Polyphilia,
but mixing
Greek and
Latin roots?
Wrong!

Heh.

I've mentioned my feelings about such compounds in a previous post, but it's nice to see I'm not alone in my convictions.  I think it's time for right-thinking people to stand up and be counted.  Polyamory?  Live and let live, I say.  "Polyamory"?  That's just not right.

It happens that another of these compounds came to my attention the other day in a computational linguistics talk.  What's worse, it's a word I've used myself on many occasions, never seeing it for what it is.  Brace yourself: unigram.  I'm fine with trigram and bigram, they're straightforward Greek compounds.  But mixing Latin uni- and Greek -gram in a single word?  That's nasty.

So, from now on I'm going to insist on monogram, and so should you.  Yes, even though that word already means something else.  It'll be worth it.  If we don't draw a line in the sand now, when will we ever be free of these Frankencompounds?

Comments

[language hat]

So I take it you also avoid the word "television"?

[The Tensor]

I use it, but I feel dirty afterwards.

[Terminal Student]

The bad kind of dirty?