Neoclassical compounds or classical compounds are compound words composed from combining forms (which act as affixes or stems) derived from the classical languages, Latin and Ancient Greek. Neo-Latin comprises many such words and is a substantial component of the technical and scientific lexicon of English and other languages, via international scientific vocabulary (ISV). For example, photography was coined in the 1830s from Greek photo- 'light' combined with -graphy 'writing'.
Source of international technical vocabulary
Neoclassical compounds represent a significant source of Neo-Latin vocabulary. Since these words are composed from classical languages which are prestigious across Western European culture, they are often shared by many languages. This makes technical writing more accessible to readers who may only have a basic understanding of the language it is written in. Not all European languages are equally receptive to neoclassical compounds. German and Russian, for instance, often create their own technical vocabularies from native elements. Usually, these creations are German and Russian calques on the international vocabulary, such as Wasserstoff and "водород" (vodoród) for hydrogen. Like any exercise in language prescription, this endeavour has been only partially successful, so while official German may still speak of a Fernsprecher, public telephones will be labelled with the internationally recognized Telefon.
Formation, spelling, and pronunciation
These words are compounds formed from Latin and Ancient Greek root words. Ancient Greek words are almost invariably romanized (see transliteration of Ancient Greek into English):
αι becomes e or æ/ae; γ plus a velar stop consonant such as γγ, γκ or γξ become ng, nc/nk, and nx; ει often becomes i (occasionally ei); θ becomes th; κ becomes c or k; οι becomes e or sometimes œ/oe in British English; ου usually becomes u, or occasionally ou; ῥ (rho with spiritus asper) becomes rh; υ becomes y; φ becomes ph or rarely f; χ becomes ch; ψ becomes ps; ω becomes o; rough breathing becomes h-. Thus, for example, Ancient Greek σφιγξ becomes English (and Latin) sphinx. Exceptions to these romanizing rules occur, such as leukemia (leukaemia); compare leukocyte, also leucocyte. Ancient Greek words often contain consonant clusters which violate the phonotactics of English and other languages: diphthong; pneumatology, phthisis. In the past, some of these were treated as silent and not pronounced, more modern speakers may to pronounce them. This adds to the irregularities of English spelling. Neoclassical compounds frequently vary their stressed syllable when suffixes are added: ágriculture, agricúltural. Many classical compounds form derivative words: e.g. astrology, astrological, astrologe, astrologist, astrologian, astrologism. Mainstream medical and scientific pronunciation is not the same as Classical Latin. For example, the Classical Latin pronunciation of venae cavae would be approximately , the standard English medical pronunciation is .
History and reception English began incorporating many of these words in the sixteenth century; geography first appeared in an English text in 1535. Other early adopted words that still survive include mystagogue, from the 1540s, and androgyne, from the 1550s. The use of these technical terms predates the scientific method; the several varieties of divination all take their names from neoclassical compounds, such as alectryomancy, divination by the pecking of chickens. Not all English writers have been friendly to the inflow of classical vocabulary. The Tudor period writer Sir John Cheke wrote:
I am of this opinion that our own tung should be written cleane and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borrowing of other tunges; wherein if we take not heed by tiim, ever borowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt. and therefore rejected what he called "inkhorn terms". Similar sentiments moved the nineteenth century author William Barnes to write "pure English," in which he avoided Greco-Latin words and found Anglo-Saxon equivalents for them: for Barnes, the newly invented art of the photograph became a sun-print. Unlike this one, some of Barnes's coinages caught on, such as foreword, Barnes's replacement for the preface of a book. Later, Poul Anderson wrote a jocular piece called Uncleftish Beholding in a constructed language based on English which others have called "Ander-Saxon"; this attempted to create a pure English vocabulary for nuclear physics. For more information, see Linguistic purism in English.
More recent developments Many such words, such as thermometer, dinosaur, rhinoceros, and rhododendron, are thoroughly incorporated into the English lexicon and are the ordinary words for their referents. Some are prone to colloquial shortening; rhinoceros often becomes rhino. The binomial nomenclature of taxonomy and biology is a major source for these items of vocabulary; for many unfamiliar species that lack a common English name, the name of the genus becomes the English word for that life form. In the metric system, prefixes that indicate multipliers are typically Greek in origin, such as kilogram, while those that indicate divisors are Latin, as in millimeter: the base roots resemble Greek words, but in truth are neologisms. These metric and other suffixes are added to native English roots as well, resulting in creations such as gigabyte. Words of mixed Latin and Greek lineage, or words that combine elements of the classical languages with English – so-called hybrid words – were formerly castigated as "barbarisms" by prescriptionist usage commentators; this disapproval has mostly abated. Indeed, in scientific nomenclature, even more exotic hybrids have appeared, such as for example the dinosaur Yangchuanosaurus. Personal names appear in some scientific names such as Fuchsia. Neoclassical compounds are sometimes used to lend grandeur or the impression of scientific rigour to humble pursuits: the study of cosmetology will not help anyone become an astronaut. Compounds along these models are also sometimes coined for humorous effect, such as odontopodology, the science of putting your foot into your mouth. These humorous coinages sometimes take on a life of their own, such as garbology, the study of garbage. Some neoclassical compounds form classical plurals, and are therefore irregular in English. Others do not, while some vacillate between classical and regular plurals.
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