Re: Country names

On Thu, May 15, 2003 at 03:38:22PM +0200, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> >What are you referring to?  I haven't seen "tetragraph" before.
>
> It's the normal form. The prefixes always go: di-, tri-, tetra-, penta-,
> hexa-, hepta-, etc...
Yes, that I knew.  I was wondering more specifically what you
were referring to, since I had missed the start of the thread.
Or maybe not - did this thread come up in regard to the Russian
transliteration "shch"?

> I have never seen a "tessera-" prefix before in my entire life.
Agreed.  I've only seen "tessera" as part of "tesseract" - from
"tessares"="four" + "aktis"="ray", since fourspace has four
axes radiating out from the origin.

Looking at semirandom Webster's etymologies, I find that
"tessares" and "tettares" appear to be alternate forms of
the Greek word for "four".  The prefix "tetra-" comes to us
via a Latin adoption of "tettares", while "tesseract" is
a modern coinage built from roots borrowed directly from Greek.

Anyone here know Greek?  Was there a systematic alternation
between "tessares" and "tettares", or was it random, or
are they from different dialects, or what?

> "tetraedron", etc...
That's spelled "tetrahedron" in English, btw.  Also, in the heated
pursuit of consistency at the cost of clarity, some folks insist
on referring to quadrilaterals and triangles as "tetragons" and
"trigons", respectively.  Oddly, I've only run across the term
"quadrangle" in reference to college campuses.

-Mark

Replies