[lit-ideas] ameliorate (WHERE is JS when you need him?!
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 06:31:17 EDT
<<In 1877, British novelist George Eliot believed she had coined "meliorist"
when she wrote, "I don't know that I ever heard anybody use the word
'meliorist' except myself." Her contemporaries credited her with coining both
"meliorist" and "meliorism," and one of her letters contains the first
documented
use of "meliorism," but there is evidence that at least "meliorist" had been
around for 30 years or so before she started using it. Whoever coined it did
so by drawing on the Latin "melior," meaning "better." It is likely that the
English coinages were also influenced by another "melior" descendant,
"meliorate," a synonym of "ameliorate" ("to make better") that was introduced
to
English in the mid-1500s.>>
The prefix "a" typically, in English, renders the verb indifferent or
neutral .... moral, immoral, amoral.
How did "meliorate" and "ameliorate" become "synonymous"?
Is "meliorate" used in common parlance anymore? "Ameliorate" surely is.
And its antonym? Demeliorate? Dismeliorate? Immeliorate?
Gotta love language.
Julie Krueger
fighting insomnia AGAIN
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