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Sunday 19 August 2018

Sunday Rest: selfitis. Word Not To Use Today.

Long, long ago, when I was young and impressionable, people used to sneer at the word television because - shock horror! - the first part of the word came from a Greek word and the second part came from Latin. 

Ah well. It filled these people with happy contempt, so it served some purpose. I mean, otherwise one can't help suspecting that they would have had completely miserable lives.*

Anyway, that was then. Nowadays it seems that no one cares anything for the derivation of words, and so we have come up with the word selfitis, (Old English beginning, Greek ending) which apparently describes a strong propensity for taking photographs of oneself.

The suffix -itis usually implies some sort of inflammation, and so...

...no, actually...

Selfitis: an inflamed sense of self. 

You know, I think I'm coming round to the word selfitis, after all.

Sunday Rest: selfitis. The suffix -itis comes from the Greek -itēs which means belonging to. Self comes from the Old English seolf.

*By the way, making the word all Greek would have left a TV called a telescope, which would have been rather confusing; but I suppose it could have made it all Latin, and then we'd have been watching distavision.


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