At 10:36 AM +1100 12/07/00, Kade Hansson wrote:
>The guy who knew his latin roots
I didn't know them, just looked them up in the dictionary. Though I
should have guessed, as I'm currently rehearsing in the chorus for
Poulenc's Gloria, and part of the text is "qui sedes ad dexteram
Patris". It does make the primary spelling easier to remember.
>should already have put an end to this. I
>suspect the only reason some dictionaries list 'supercede' as an
>alternative is because so many people (and indeed dictionaries, it
>seems)
>get it wrong.
Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. If people start using
"supercede" in large numbers in natural language, then dictionaries
will quite properly list it as a word in use, giving the etymology as a
variant spelling of "supersedes", qv.
This is quite different from RFCs, which *are* prescriptive. So in
headers it must be "supersedes" until the RFC changes -- even though in
this case the controlling RFC isn't even an "official RFC", but Henry
Spencer's so-called "son of 1036".
The OED has been cited in this thread; its original editor James Murray
compiled it as a huge project of volunteers reading works of literature
and journalism and reporting words they found. An enormous work of data
processing for the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The dictionary
simply reported, except for censoring a few words that even Oxford
University couldn't afford to publish in Victorian England -- though
Murray would have included even those if he'd gotten his way.
The OED noted "supercede" as "now erroneous" as an observation of the
prevailing view of the time. The etymology of "supersede" notes that
the medieval Latin version was in fact often "supercedere", and gives
examples of English usage as early as 1491 and as late as 1807.
Obviously one reason we have trouble with this word is that "cede" has
a closely related meaning. "Cede" comes from the Latin "cedere". Oops,
medieval Latin confused them ... this conflation has been going on for
many centuries.
Wonderful book, the OED ... I have an urge to curl up and read.
Edward Reid
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