Neoclassical compound

Neoclassical compounds are compound words composed from combining forms derived from classical languages roots. 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. For example, Greek bio- combines with -graphy to form biography.

Formation, spelling, and pronunciation

These words are compounds formed from Latin and Ancient Greek root words. Ancient Greek words are almost invariably romanized. In English:

Ancient Greek αι becomes e or æ/''ae;
Ancient Greek groups with γ'' plus a velar stop consonant such as γγ, γκ or γξ become ng, nc and nx respectively;
Ancient Greek ει often becomes i ;
Ancient Greek θ becomes th;
Ancient Greek κ becomes c or k;
Ancient Greek οι becomes e or sometimes œ/''oe in British English;
Ancient Greek ου usually becomes u'', or occasionally ou;
Ancient Greek ῥ becomes rh;
Ancient Greek υ becomes y;
Ancient Greek φ becomes ph or, very rarely, f;
Ancient Greek χ becomes ch;
Ancient Greek ψ becomes ps;
Ancient Greek ω becomes o;
Ancient Greek rough breathing becomes h-.

Thus, for example, Ancient Greek σφιγξ becomes English sphinx. Exceptions to these romanizing rules occur, such as leukemia ; compare leukocyte, also leucocyte. In Latin, and in the target languages, the Greek vowels are given their neoclassical values rather than their contemporary values in demotic Greek.
Ancient Greek words often contain consonant clusters which are foreign to the phonology of contemporary English and other languages that incorporate these words into their lexicon: diphthong; pneumatology, phthisis. The traditional response in English is to treat the unfamiliar cluster as containing one or more silent letters and suppress their pronunciation, more modern speakers tend to try and pronounce the unusual cluster. This adds to the irregularities of English spelling; moreover, since many of these words are encountered in writing more often than they are heard spoken, it introduces uncertainty as to how to pronounce them when encountered.
Neoclassical compounds frequently vary their stressed syllable when suffixes are added: ágriculture, agricúltural. This also gives rise to uncertainty when these words are encountered in print. Once a classical compound has been created and borrowed, it typically becomes the foundation of a whole series of related words: e.g. astrology, astrological, astrologer/astrologist/astrologian, astrologism.
Mainstream medical and ISV pronunciation in English is not the same as Classical Latin pronunciation. Like Ecclesiastical Latin, it has a regularity of its own, and individual sounds can be mapped or compared. Although the Classical Latin pronunciation of venae cavae would be approximately, the standard English medical pronunciation is.

letter or digraph	Restored Pronunciation in English of Latin	Medical/ISV pronunciation in English	Example term
a			ramus
ae			hyphae
e			mesial
i			sinus

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:
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.

Translation

There are hundreds of neoclassical compounds in English and other European languages. As traditionally defined, combining forms cannot stand alone as free words, but there are many exceptions to this rule, and in the late 20th century such forms are increasingly used independently: bio as a clipping of biography, telly as a respelt clipping of television. Most neoclassical combining forms translate readily into everyday language, especially nouns: bio- as 'life' -graphy as 'writing, description'.
Because of this, the compounds of which they are part can be more or less straightforwardly paraphrased: biography as 'writing about a life', neurology as 'the study of the nervous system'. Many classical combining forms are designed to take initial or final position: autobiography has the two initial or preposed forms auto- and bio-, and one postposed form -graphy. Although most occupy one position or the other, some can occupy both: -graph- as in graphology and monograph; -phil- as in philology and Anglophile. Occasionally, the same base is repeated in one word: logology the study of words, phobophobia the fear of fear.

Preposed and postposed

Prefixes include: aero- air, crypto- hidden, demo- people, geo- earth, odonto- tooth, ornitho- bird, thalasso- sea. Many have both a traditional simple meaning and a modern telescopic meaning: in biology, bio- means 'life', but in bio-degradable it telescopes 'biologically'; although hypno- basically means 'sleep', it also stands for 'hypnosis'.
When a form stands alone as a present-day word, it is usually a telescopic abbreviation: bio biography, chemo chemotherapy, hydro hydroelectricity, metro metropolitan. Some telescoped forms are shorter than the original neoclassical combining form: gynie is shorter than gyneco- and stands for both gynecology and gynecologist; anthro is shorter than anthropo- and stands for anthropology.
Suffixes include: -ectomy cutting out, -graphy writing, description, -kinesis motion, -logy study, -mancy divination, -onym name, -phagy eating, -phony sound, -therapy healing, -tomy cutting. They are generally listed in dictionaries without the interfixed vowel, which appears however in such casual phrases as 'ologies and isms'.

Variants

Some classical combining forms are variants of one base.
Some are also free words, such as mania in dipsomania and phobia in claustrophobia.
Some are composites of other elements, such as encephalo- brain, from en- in, -cephal- head; and -ectomy cutting out, from ec- out, -tom- cut, -y, a noun-forming suffix that means "process of".