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A.Word.A.Day--misocainea

misocainea (mis-oh-KY-nee-uh, mi-soh-) noun

Hatred of anything new.

[Greek miso- (hate) + caino- (new).]

"Although I agree with the majority that no appellate court has yet held an insurer liable absent a premium payment, it may be nothing more than appellate judges suffering from a case of misocainea!" Hill v. Chubb Life American Insurance Co., Arizona Business Gazette (Phoenix), Nov 11, 1993.

It's a good thing we don't have to act out the literal meaning of words or we'd all be exercising in the nude in gymnasia. The word gymnasium comes to us from the Greek gymnazein, literally to train in the nude. Other words formed using the combining form gymno- (naked or bare) are gymnoplast (protoplasm without surrounding wall) and gymnosophy (a form of philosophy practiced by a sect of ascetics who refuse to wear clothes).

As its name indicates, a combining form is a linguistic form that combines with a free word or another combining form to make a word. Sometimes there can be two combining forms joining a third (auto-bio-graphy). Also the same combining form can take different positions at different times (-graph- in graphology and autograph). Then there are instances where the same combining form can join itself to produce a word (logology, the study of words). All this can perhaps be explained very well using humans as the metaphor. But as this newsletter is family-oriented, we'll resist that temptation.

Instead, in this week's AWAD we'll see some unusual words formed by other combining forms: miso- (hate), pili- (hair), ichno- (track), stego- (cover), and chiro- (hand). -Anu

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