antidisestablishmentarianism

Factual Questions
1

What, ultimately, is the root word under all those prefixes and suffixes?

2

Establishment.

3

“establish” – you can’t break that down any further in English.

4

(And in this context, “establish” means to make a religion the official religion of a country or state – in particular, to make the Church of England the official religon of England).

5
6

And establish, of course, means to make stable, so you could argue that “stable” is the root word here, as it exists in English. Establish is a French spelling of Latin stabilire, which comes from stabilis, meaning firm or stable. This is a form of the verb stare, which means to stand. This word exists in rather similar forms in most Indo-European languages, and very probably derives straight from Proto-Indo-European.

7

Also, ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ isn’t the limit of possible suffixes/prefixes, you could also have nonantidisestablishmentarianismically or perhaps quasiantidisestablishmentarianismically

8

Anti-distinctly-minty…

9

As mentioned earlier:

  1. Establishment refers to the establishment of the Anglican CHurch as the official religion of England.

  2. Disestablishment was a movement to remove the Anglican church’s status as England’s official religion.

  3. Antidisestablishmentarianism is a philosophy that opposed removing the Anglican church’s honored status.

But since, as our first grade teachers told us, "two negatives (like “anti” and “dis”) make a positive, “establishmentarianism” probably would have worked just fine. No need for two extra prefixes.

10

But there is a significant distinction in this case. “Establishmentarianism” would reflect wanting to establish said church. “Antidisestablishmentariansism” is not wanting to establish the church per se (it was already established), but opposing efforts to rescind said establishment. While the end result – having the church established – is basically the same, doing something is not the same as protesting its undoing.

11

Your first grade teacher thought you were too young to understand litotes.

12

Ask your first grade teacher what she thinks of the word “undiscovered.” :dubious:

13

A Rule of Thumb for the SDMB:

If a person starts a post on the English language with the words “I learned in school” what follows will invariably be wrong.

14

My linguistics (anthropology) professor wrote this on the board and specifically asked this exact question.

The answer according to her was “esta,” something about latin or something meaning “to be” …It was a looooong time ago.