--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, R A Brown <ray@C...> wrote:
>
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > Quoting R A Brown <ray@C...>:
> [snip]
> >>Humph - altho we have _sexaginta_ (60), _sexagesimus_ (60th) etc,
the
> >>use of -a- as an infix between 'sex' and another morpheme is not
> >>productive in Latin. The Latin for 16 is 'sedecim'.
> >
> > Well, I suppose that explains why one of my programming textbooks
insisted on
> > writing 'sedecimal' instead of 'hexadecimal'.
>
> It does indeed :)
>
> I must confess I had not encountered 'sedecimal' before, but Google
has
> given me 526 hits.
>
[snip]
> *sedecimus have actually occurred? It may well be that it is only
by
> chance that we have no actual record of it, and have only the more
> long-winded _sextus decimus_ forms.
>
> Personally, I find _sedecimal_ much more preferable to the ghastly
> hybrid 'hexadecimal' and it is not likely to arouse all those
strange
> urges that, apparently, 'sextidecimal' does ;)
Has anyone else besides me noticed that "semester", which
etymologically meant "six months", has been folk-etymologized
as "semi-"+ something?
This appears to account for some companies' uses of "trimester" for a
third of a year.
When discussing gestation people recognize "trimester" as three
months; yet when discussing the fiscal calendar these same people --
many of them parents, even mothers -- think of a trimester as being
four months long.
Who else has noticed this?
-----
Tom H.C. in MI