Ha, I know that one’s wrong. The correct version:
“Most of the quotations you read on the internet are wrongly attributed.” — Abraham Lincoln
(How do I know it’s true? I saw it on his website!)
Sure, but due to its construction, in order for the word “atheist” to work and have meaning you have to invent the word “theist” at exactly the same time.
That’s called “back formation”. “Pea” was derived from “pease” (as in pease porridge hot), in the same manner; “pease” was a non-plural mass noun in the same way as “oatmeal”.
Not necessarily. If you’re a theologian who writes about these things, and you got your education in the Western world, you almost certainly would have a working knowledge of Greek, given that language’s great importance in the early history of Christianity, and you could easily coin the word “atheist” using the Greek root for “god” and the prefix meaning “without”.
Zoologists were perfectly capable of inventing the word “agnatha” (jawless swimming vertebrates) without already having the word “gnatha”.
I used this in a “53 bicycle” puzzle recently:
“Kick” may have come from a Scandinavian (presumably Danish) wordmeaning to bend backwards or bend at the knee. This seems plausible given that English has the word “kick” at all while German doesn’t. (In that language, the cognate to “tread” is used to denote the transitive verb “kick”, and otherwise it means about the same thing as “tread” in English.)
The meaning of the proposed Danish cognate is certainly different, but obviously still thematically similar (if that’s the correct way of putting it).
The work “telephone” came before the word “phone”, didn’t it?
I’m not claiming that they have to have the word beforehand, merely that at the point of coining the word “agnatha” they are also creating the word “gnatha” at the same time.
If I coin the word unspaffable, and claim that it means a substance that cannot be spaffed, In order for the word to have meaning I have, necessarily, at the very same instant, created the word spaffable.
no, “phone” is from the ancient Greek meaning voice or sound.
Debunking this idea:
I disagree with you (and agree with Spectre). This hinges on what one means by “creating a word” — but I think the more useful interpretations of this phrase involve more than what you are suggesting.
In post #37, I referred to the same thing, but going deeper in time:
“It seems that with “kick” experts can at least make an educated guess, that it’s from the same Indo European root (meaning “to sprout” or “jut out”) that gave us “chit” and “scion.””
One that I discovered a few years ago but I’ve had lots of fun explaining to engineers whose first language isn’t English is the origin of “blueprint”. To us, that word just Doesn’t Make Sense; often, our names for those things are similar to English “plan” and would mean “flat drawing”, making the English “plan” a false friend. Blueprint comes from a specific reproduction technique which was popular in some countries but unknown in others. Knowing the origin of that “nonsense” word makes it a lot easier to recall it and avoid the false friend, which helps in those international meetings.
You are free to disagree of course but I can’t grasp how one can construct a word like “atheist” without also the word “theist” coming into being at exactly the same moment.
Theist has a specific meaning which isn’t the exact opposite of atheist.
Little known facts: He doesn’t write his own material (the authors are mentioned in the closing credits) and he works out of Prague.
I thought it was said by Mark Twain, but it’s a little known fact that those two stole each others material all the time.
With a Straight Dope shoutout!
Just like having zero money is not exactly the opposite of rich (being heavily in debt would be nearer the mark)
But that doesn’t really matter. The definition of words change over time and I don’t think anyone was quibbling about that so let’s not go down that rabbit-hole as it wasn’t the point I was making (hence why I created the abstract word “unspaffable”)
But I think my point still stands, I certainly haven’t heard a good rebuttal to it, that the very latest that the word “theist” was created was the point at which “atheist” was created. It may not have existed as a concept or a word before that time but its existence is implicit and necessary in the construction and meaning of “atheist”
Was the word “phone” used in English before the word “telephone”?
If you coined a word starting with “un” and defined it by using the part of the word that comes after that which you also just termed, how is anyone going to know what the definition of your word is? If I coined the word incommunicado, does the word communicado now necessarily exist?
You’re coming to the erroneous conclusion that atheist was being defined as one who isn’t a theist, rather than one who denies the existence of gods. If no one is using theist as a word until many years later, then atheist predates theist.
Not necessary in the construction or meaning.