A.Word.A.Day --monology

A.Word.A.Day

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Jul 2, 2012

This week's theme
Words made with combining forms

This week's words
monology
logomachy
phylogeny
scotophobia
epigraphy

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Give a man (or a woman) a few words and he'll use them for a while (before repeating himself). Teach a man how to make new words and he'll always have fresh words.

This week we'll give you some building blocks for words -- also known as combining forms -- that you can join as you like. Put two or more of these combining forms together and you can come up with a new word in short order. In some cases, you may be ahead of time -- you may have a word to describe something that does not yet exist.

What are combining forms? You can think of them as Lego (from Danish, leg: play + godt: well) bricks of language. As the term indicates, a combining form is a linguistic atom that occurs only in combination with some other form which could be a word, another combining form, or an affix (unlike a combining form, an affix cannot attach to another affix).

monology

PRONUNCIATION:

(muh-NOL-uh-jee)

MEANING:

noun:
1. A long speech by someone, especially when interfering with conversation.
2. The habit of monologizing.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek mono- (one) + -logy (speech). Earliest documented use: 1608.

USAGE:

"She mumbled, continuing her monology."
Paul Jopling; Boleslaw's Curse; Dog Ear Publishing; 2006.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering. -Jane Austen, novelist (1775-1817)

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