Re: Academentia par excellence.

chris+news@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Chris Suslowicz) wrote:

In article <446842e1.6386000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
raltbos@xxxxxxxxx (Richard Bos) wrote:

Richard Gadsden <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Satya wrote:
On Fri, 12 May 2006 10:33:53 +0000 (UTC), Peter Corlett wrote:
Satya <satyap@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
(I fI understand correctly what "ur-" means).
I think you're going to have to explain it to me.

As I understand it, ur-foo is the class foo from which all the foo
objects were instantiated. I'm probably not quite right.

It's more the exemplar object than the class.

Almost, but...

Ur was supposedly the
first city, and it originally meant the first instance of the class, but
now it has come to mean more an epitome of the class.

...no. Ur- as in ur-foo is a normal English construct borrowed directly
from German, where it means "ancient, original" (much like the Dutch
equivalent "oer"). Ur the city, OTOH, was founded and named by the
Sumerians, who, AFAICT, spoke an ancient Semitic language. That the name
of a very old city sounds the same as a Germanic word for ancient is,
TTBOMK, completely accidental.

"Archetype", then? (As in "He's the archetypical Luser", etc.)

Well... yesno. That's what it has come to mean in English, but the
original meaning in German (and Dutch) is just "very old". "Archetype"
has overtones of "most typical" which "ur-" does not have.

Richard
.

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