Re: "hermetic" -- Re: Hi, I'm Marie.

On Mon, 6 Feb 2006 15:23:55 +0000 (UTC), Marek W. Lugowski
<mareklug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in rec.arts.poems:

In article <slrndu77e8.845.pjr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Peter J Ross <pjr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 3 Feb 2006 09:06:17 -0800, MarieAlighieri@xxxxxxxxx
<MarieAlighieri@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in rec.arts.poems:

Hi, I'm Marie, and I'm surfing Google groups because I know that the
people who join them will be interested in visiting my website, and
there's really no other way they would hear about it.
...
I am a Canadian writer and I have a website with some written works,
news feeds, biographical information and various other things I think
are just neat.

Please visit me: http://www.mariealighieri.com

Thanks, Marie.

...
I'm not sure "hermitic" is a word. Hermetic? Eremitic?


PJR :-)

Peter, at least in the USA and Canada "hermitic" is a word.

The important question to me is whether it's a *good* word. Is it fit
for polite company or should it be sent round to the servants'
entrance along with many others that are recorded in dictionaries?

Here is
a verbatim transcription of its listing in my hardcopy unabridged
dictionary, dating from at least 1961 (that was the last update of
the lexicon for its main body):

hermitic \(')her,mid,ik\ or hermitical \-d,ekel\ _adj_: of, relating
to, or suited for a hermit -- her-mit-i-cal-ly \-d,ek(e)lee\ _adv_

-- p. 1060, _Webster's Third New International Dictionary_,
(a Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary),
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.,
Chicago, London, Toronto, Geneva, Sydney, Tokyo, Manila,
1976.

Yes, there's no doubt that it's been used.

The New SOED suggests a derivation from Old French /heremitique/
(which may or may not have accents; I'd have to reboot into Windows to
check), but this seems doubtful to me in the absence of early
evidence for "heremitic".

/Piers Plowman/ has "in habit as an heremite, unholy of werkes", in
which the alliteration shows that the H was sounded. Therefore
/heremite/ => /hermit/ and /heremitique/ => /hermitic/ seems
plausible, and would account for mediaeval uses of the word if any
exist. But this doesn't mean that the word has had a continuous
history in standard usage and has not been deemed in the past to be
wrong.

As for British usage, I found the following:

"Last Updated: Saturday, 25 December, 2004, 08:20 GMT

The man behind The Aviator

By Neil Smith
BBC News

Movie mogul, aviation pioneer, hermitic recluse: Howard Hughes, the
subject of Martin Scorsese's new blockbuster The Aviator, led a
fascinating life."

Journalism, especially the kind of journalism in which somebody can
write "hermitic recluse" without any feeling of redundancy, isn't
evidence of good practice. That instance of the word certainly won't
be admitted by the butler at the front door.

I can think of no use for /hermitic/ that isn't well covered by
/eremitic/ and /hermit[-]like/. It resembles /hermetic/ and is likely
to be used in similar contexts, potentially causing confusion. Why not
just replace the unnecessary bad word with a better one?

Google data, FWIW:

Results 1 - 100 of about 38,400 for hermitic
Results 1 - 100 of about 940 for hermitical

Results 1 - 100 of about 33,500 for eremitic
Results 1 - 100 of about 34,900 for eremitical

Results 1 - 100 of about 817 for hermitlike
Results 1 - 100 of about 65,000 for "hermit-like" [slightly over-
estimated because Google treats the hyphen as a space]

Three final examples:

cenobite => cenobitic
stylite => stylitic
eremite => eremitic

All of these are correct, because the "-ite" regularly represents
Greek/Latin "-itos/-itus" in English, just as the "-itic" regularly
represents "-itikos/-iticus", and the words all "look" Classical"; but
"hermit" doesn't end in "-ite" and is as English as "monk" or
"priest". "Hermitic" is as un-English to me as "monkic" or "priestic"
would be.

PJR :-)
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