Monday, December 17, 2018

Lexember 17th: anurohëtin, "exceptional, unique"


The word anurohëtin /ʔa.nu.ɾo.ˈxə.tin/ exceptional, unique, is a rather complicated derivation from anin one.

Ën nurím në anurohëtin no so!
this mead TOP exceptional be.PFV ASSEV
This mead is exceptional!

Ëlá në vahwéla anurohëtin no.
3PL TOP way.of.life unique be.PFV
Their way of life is unique.

2 comments:

  1. I would love to know how you derived "exceptional" from "one". I'm assuming it's a number - would the same process applied to "two" yield something like "duality"?

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    Replies
    1. The original sense is more on the "unique" side, for something that is truly singular and unique in the world. It then went through the normal inflation cycle that has people using the word "literally" for non-literal things. That lead to the "exceptional" sense, which is now dominant.

      I keep a notebook for new words, and they only become official once they move into the main LaTeX dictionary. This one has been sitting in my notebook for a while, and I didn't show all my work, so I'm no longer 100% sure how *exactly* the derivation developed. But I'm going to keep it anyway.

      Deriving from the word "two" (timu) would not yield just "duality" but something more like somehow "prone to two-ness," which could be an interesting idea, but I'd need to think on that a while to decide what exactly it means.

      Thanks for the question!

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