Re: OT: Another analytic question

In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Tristan McLeay <conlang@T...> wrote:

>Well, I'm talking about *my own* perceptions, so what you do is
>hardly relevant to me :P I never worked out that hectare and decibel
>were composed because their pronunciations are smashed together,
>because the prefixes are rare to the point of never occurring
>without those units, and because the units are rare to the point of
>never occurring without those prefixes.
I guess it is a matter of perception.  Those of us who have a
background in science know that "deci-" is not rare at all and
certainly is attached to other units: decigram, deciliter, and
decimeter.  Likewise with "hect(o)-": hectogram, hectoliter, and
hectometer.

"Bel" is an interesting unit.  It is not an absolute quantity like a
liter or a meter.  Rather, it is the logarithm to base 10 of the
ratio between two different levels of power, voltage, current or
sound intensity.  The decibel is ten times that logarithm.

The formation of the word is interesting because, in all other
uses, "deci-" indicates one-tenth of, while "deca-" is used for ten
times.

Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/User:Caeruleancentaur