A pondering about the English language, and the speaking of she...

[Bunny M]

A thought ambled across centre stage of my brainspace today, which was:

If an accellerant is something that accelerates, is something that insulate and insulant?

Now, I'm pretty sure this isn't the case, and I would just go ask Wikipedia or dictionary.com, but that'd be nowhere near as much fun as letting this meme loose amongst my fellow Deltas, and besides, I'm certain I'd get a better idea of why it's not correct here.

So, have at it, explain to me why I shouldn't start using this word... 

Other than the fact that it's already giving my spell-check conniptions, which is not necessarily a bad thing, to be honest. 

[Felicia1066]

Um... because strictly speaking, an accelerant isn't something that accelerates? It's something that makes something else accelerate. For example, a fire accelerant makes the spread of the fire accelerate. So if you come across a material that makes things insulate better/faster, feel free to call it an insulant.

[Scedasticity]

An accelerant is something that accelerates -- in the transitive sense of the verb, to cause something else to experience acceleration.  Accelerate also has the intransitive sense, to experience acceleration.

I believe 'insulate' is strictly transitive -- even if you just say "X insulates", there is an implied "Y".  I'm not sure what that says for word formation.


Actually, the real answer is that words derived from Latin did not all make the shift into English in all their possible forms, and the meanings don't always transfer analogously.  We can tell from the usual transfer pattern that if we see 'insulant', it probably means 'something which insulates'.

Actually actually, the real answer is that according to the dictionary on my computer, insulant is 'an insulating material'.  I expect it's not used much outside technical settings, if there.

[Felicia1066]

Ah, transitive, yes. Not being a native English speaker, I don't have all the grammatical terms at the tip of my tongue.

And yes, it's about the Latin. But IIRC, the Latin-derived -nt suffix does carry the inherent meaning of "causing something else to X" - which means you can't blindly apply it to any verb. I really should refresh my Latin, though. It's been a long time since I used it.

[Elizabeth Bear]

Well,  we do have accelerants and accelerators, and insulants and insulators.

...seems perfectly logical to me.

[el_jefe]

I'm afraid I'm more knowledgeable with insolence than insulants.

[Foxipher Jones]

I'm afraid I'm more knowledgeable with insolence than insulants.

This.

[Scedasticity]

Ah, transitive, yes. Not being a native English speaker, I don't have all the grammatical terms at the tip of my tongue.

And yes, it's about the Latin. But IIRC, the Latin-derived -nt suffix does carry the inherent meaning of "causing something else to X" - which means you can't blindly apply it to any verb. I really should refresh my Latin, though. It's been a long time since I used it.

It's been a few years since I had any Latin, so this may be wrong.  If I recall correctly:

Start with a verb, say your usual amo, amas, amat (I love, you love, he/she/it loves); the infinitive is amare (to love) (I think).  We then form the adjective amans, (loving).  Being a Latin adjective, amans must decline; these verb-formations generally end up third-declension, amans, amantis.  I think.  You can then go on to get a noun, something-that-loves -- I think amans, amantis can work for that, too; Latin adjectives stand in for nouns relatively easily.  On the other hand, amat- is an adjective root meaning 'loved'.  Of course amo, amare isn't one of the verbs which made it into English -- except, of course, as 'something to be loved', amanda.

So, accelero, accelerare is a Latin verb transitive meaning, roughly, to hasten, to speed up (an object).  Something doing the hastening is accelerans, accelerantis, which eventually yields the English noun accelerant.

But of course it's not consistent.  Nothing in English is consistent.

Mathematics is a collective noun, a discipline, practiced by mathematicians.  Mathematic is not a word.  The adjective is mathematical.  Statistics is a collective noun, a discipline, practiced by statisticians.  It is also the plural of the noun statistic, a piece of information.  The adjective is statistical.  Physics is a collective noun, a discipline, practiced by physicists.  Physicians are something else, practicing medicine, although they might archaically have been said to practice physic and generally study physiology.  Physical is a much more general adjective.  Statistic is a noun, physic was a noun, psychiatric is an adjective, ballistic is an adjective, mystic is either but the discipline is mysticism, mathematic isn't a word.  Egotistical is an adjective; what is egotistic?

Yeah, I meant to go to bed twenty minutes ago.  Can you tell I spend too much time thinking about this stuff?

[Bunny M]

But of course it's not consistent.  Nothing in English is consistent.

Lovingly quoted for truth. It is, after all, one of the fun parts of English.

[txanne]

It's been a few years since I had any Latin, so this may be wrong.  If I recall correctly:

You recall correctly and explain with elegance. Well done.

[eschatonic]

But of course it's not consistent.  Nothing in English is consistent.

Lovingly quoted for truth. It is, after all, one of the fun parts of English.

As the wise man said: English is German, as spoken by people who only speak French, and written by people who only read Latin.

A native German speaker once told me English was harder for him than Chinese. "German has rules.  Chinese has rules.  English is backwards, and all your conjugations are wrong."

[Elizabeth Bear]

As the wise man said: English is German, as spoken by people who only speak French, and written by people who only read Latin.

...by way of Iceland.

[hawkwing_lb]

As the wise man said: English is German, as spoken by people who only speak French, and written by people who only read Latin.

...by way of Iceland.

And anywhere else that had a useful bit of vocabulary or grammatical oddity waiting to be Anglicised.

[glinda_w]

Or, as James Nicoll said:

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

[Felicia1066]

Don't even get me started on English pronunciation.