I'm going to go home and unthaw the meatloaf.

anders
Lexiterian
Posts: 405
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:46 am
Location: Sweden

Postby anders » Sat Mar 12, 2005 5:41 am

Re: re-

That's a nasty prefix. It is often impossible to guess waht it means, if you encounter a new word using it. In refrigerate and similar, it seems to me that it is just used as some kind of re(!)inforcement. What does it mean in reserve or rebel?

I guess, though, that most cases will induce a meaning of 'again', but we should make a difference beteween re-creation and recreation. This re- is generally thought to relate back to a PIE *re-, from the same stock as our old friend the worm, PIE *wer-, and all notions of turning. Thus, re- is 'turning back'.

'Re(!)versal' would be another shade. Maybe resign belogns here.

Yet other varieties of 'turning back' would be the 'oppose' sets: retaliate, resist, and repugnant if taken as 'fight against' (cf. pugilist etc.)

For a specialist in semantics, it would probably be possible to find 20 more shades of emaning, but I'm not out to score in that department.
Irren ist männlich

dex
Junior Lexiterian
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Mar 11, 2005 4:22 pm

Postby dex » Fri Mar 25, 2005 6:51 pm

Welcome dex, I agree!

Katy
Hi Katy,
thanx :D
dex


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