Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Uglossia and Utopia

From:Sally Caves <scaves@...>
Date:Thursday, September 23, 1999, 6:02
Ed Heil wrote:

> Wow, I always thought that "utopia" came from eu+topia, and meant > "the good place," but the WWWebster dictionary agrees with you -- it > says it comes from ou+topia, "no place." Which is better > transliteration (ou transliterates as u, but eu generally doesn't), > but I've never heard of "ou" being used as a prefix before outside of > pronouns like "ouden"! I would have thought of "atopia" to mean "no > place." > > Ray, does this strike you too as a very weird Greek compound, or is > this more common than I think and I just haven't run across it before?
I thought this was originally cobbled together by Thomas More in his book. Eager to hear Ray's answer, though. Utopia is often confused with eutopia, which is why we have the later invention dystopia as "antonym." Sal -- ============================================================ SALLY CAVES scaves@frontiernet.net http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves (bragpage) http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html (T. homepage) http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/contents.html (all else) ===================================================================== Niffodyr tweluenrem lis teuim an. "The gods have retractible claws." from _The Gospel of Bastet_ ============================================================