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

On 3/21/06, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:
> Mark J. Reed skrev:
> > On 3/20/06, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> wrote:
> >
> >> otherwise I have to side with my
> >>sympolitan[1] Mark Reed, and say that deliberately
> >>making up major new elements like this seems like
> >>cheating.
> >
> >
> > Yeah!  Woot!  ¡Viva Atlanta! :)
> >>1.  Ray, is "sympolitan" a sound neo-Greek form?
> >
> >
> > Eh, since when does derivational soundness have anything to do with
> > acceptance of a neologism?  I like it!  :)
>
> 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_.  Now how do you pronounce
> _ngn_ in English?
"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.

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).

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry

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