Re: OT: neologism "sympolitan" (was: Re: [relay] The romlangs!)

Jim Henry wrote:
> On 3/21/06, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:
[snip]
>>
>>Nunquam.  BTW I don't think Ray is on this list.
>>But I don't think _polit-_ is the right term here,
>>since it means "citizen".  If I understand my ancient
>>Greek-German-Greek dictionary right "opinion" is
>>_gnó:me:_ in Greek and a possessor of _gnó:me:_ is a
>>_gnó:mo:n_, so *if* you go for derivational soundness
>>it should be _syngnomon_.
_syNgno:mo:n_ does indeed exist in ancient Greek; it is an adjective
meaning "agreeing with", "sharing knowledge with," or, with passive
meaning, "deserving pardon". Of course any adjective can be used as a
noun, meaning 'one who....'

> Now how do you pronounce _ngn_ in English?
You mean as in _syngnathous_ (adj. [of fish] = having jaws fused to form
a tubular structure)? /Nn/ of course.

> "I have to side with my syngnomon Mark Reed" would
> be a pleonasm -- essentially "I have to agree with this person I am
> in agreement with".  I mean to say "I have to side with my
> fellow-citizen-of-Atlanta Mark Reed"  -- and "sympolitan",
> formed by analogy with "cosmopolitan," a long-standing
> English word if not perfectly good Greek (I'm not quite qualified
> to judge on the latter point) seemed worth a try.
The Greek for 'word-citizen' is _kosmopilite:s_; the English is though
from a Latinized form *cosmopilitanus. That is not found in Classical
Latin, but might well occurred in some later Latin text.

Yes, the ancient Greek for "a citizen of the some 'polis'" is
_sympolite:s_, so 'sympolitan' is a reasonable derivative.

> And to my question to Ray (yes, I was aware he wasn't on the
> relay list; I just forgot what list we were on) I'll add another
> one -- is there a good English term from Anglo-Saxon (or
> even Norman or Norman+Anglo-Saxon) roots that's as
> concise as "sympolitan" and which I'm overlooking?
> The problem is "fellow-citizen" in this context seemed too
> broad, since it could mean a citizen of the same country
> just as well as a citizen of the same city (which, in
> point of fact, we aren't; but we are inhabitants of the
> same metropolitan area).
I can't think of one. We would say things like 'fellow-Londoner',
'fellow-Glaswegian', 'fellow-Mancunian' etc. But I can't think of a
similar term where the second element is generic. A fellow-citizen, as
you say, is too wide. In my case (being a Brit), s/he might not even
live in the same country as me; I also hold citizen of the European
Community - so fellow-citizen is a wee bit too wide.

--
Ray
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