Reply #20: Wrong etymology. [View All]

[Igel]

"Homo sapiens": Latin 'homo' is from *homen-s' (genitive in Latin was 'hominis'),with the root *homen-. It shows up in 'hominid' and 'humane' (the e > i and o > u changes are regular when the vowels weren't stressed; English also has stress-based vowel reduction).

"Homosexual" isn't ultimately derived from Latin 'homo', but from Greek 'homos', meaning 'the same, identical'. Cf. 'homonym' or 'homologue'. It's opposite is 'heteros', meaning 'different' (cognate with "cetera" in 'et cetera', "and other things"). 'Homosexuality' is sexual attraction to one like yourself, 'heterosexuality' is sexual attraction to one unlike yourself; if you assume sexual dimorphism--you're sexually male or female, with no other options--it's a clear enough set of lexemes.

"Homophobia" is derived from 'homos' and 'phobia'--both Greek--but only after 'homosexual' was clear in the context . 'Homophobia' could be fear or hatred of anybody like yourself, which clearly isn't the meaning (so an etymology-based definition collapses immediately). Compounding -phobia with 'homosexual', which is what 'homophobia' is, ultimately, would yield 'homosexophobia', which is too unwieldy to be used (assuming I formed it properly). "Homophobia" isn't just fear or dislike of "the same", but of sexual attraction to "the same". The clipped form 'homo' probably helped make "homophobia" more easily parsed.

"Hominophobic" is the word you'd think you'd want to describe your aliens, but we often try to avoid Latin-Greek blends. "Anthropophobic" has the right meaning and already exists.

The two "homo" words are sort of shoe-cabbages, a term based on the French and English words for 'cabbage': French chou 'cabbage' is pronounced very much like English "shoe", so a shoe-cabbage is a pair of cross-language near-homophones. The intro to Russian text I used once upon a time introduced the Russian word for "to sew" in the first year (because it's was an appropriately irregular verb), and I had to get past a Russian-English shoe-cabbage: 'To sew' in Russian is "shit'", and getting the more prim students to use it out loud was difficult. Once heard a DJ not well-versed in German pronounce Baroque composer Johann Joseph Fux' name as though his surname were a shoe-cabbage; the station manager was not amused.