Pages

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Making a List and Checking It Twice

Here is a list of some English words derived from Latin pronouns:
  • egoism (also ego, superego, etc.; cf. tuism and illeism in Coleridge)
  • haecceity
  • id (apparently not used by Freud but by his translators)
  • nostrum
  • postil (also postiller)
  • quibble
  • quiddity
  • solipsism
  • suicide
I intentionally but somewhat irrationally left out ipsedixitism, paternoster, quodlibet, and some others, although they do contain Latin pronouns. At first I thought hocus-pocus should be included, but the Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology says no.