Re: Bisyllabic or Disyllabic?

At 9:35 pm -0400 8/8/00, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>Quick question... what do you call a two-syllable word (or stem)? Is it
>bisyllabic or disyllabic? Is there a hyphen in the word or not?
>
>Thanks... sorry, I'm too lazy to get off the computer to look it up :-)
Certainly no hyphen.

The word 'syllable' is ultimately of Greek origin, and ancient Greek had
'disyllabos' = "of two syllables - it even had a verb: disyllabeein = to
consist of two syllables!  Classical Latin uses only 'disyllabus', keeping
the Greek prefix di-.  *bisyllabus, using the Latin bi- simply does not
occur - it would've sounded like a barbaric mangling of languages!

Therefor IMHO 'disyllabic' is the preferred form (indeed, my dictionary
does not list *bisyllabic); to me saying 'bisyllabic' would be just as odd
as saying *biphthong   ;)

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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