• PhoturisEnglish
    25•1 month ago

    I unironically love Latinisation (and Greekification).

    “Crabification” would have worked just fine to express this idea, but “carcinisation” sounds so scientific and erudite.

    People dog on English, but I think it’s really cool how we have other ancient source languages to pull from to coin “smart” words when needed. And when you dig into the etymology of the “fancy” word, it adds texture, layers, history, and extra context to the whole thing.

    Ok, that was a tangent. Carry on.

    • TheTechnician27English
      13•1 month ago

      A few additional fun points about this:

      • “Crab” is Germanic.
      • “-ification” itself has its roots in Latin, so even your proposal would be “Latinised”.
      • "carcino- comes from Ancient Greek.
      • True crabs’ scientific name, “Brachyura”, is Neo-Latin derived from Ancient Greek.