I am writing a paper and I want to draw a correlation between the words communicate and community in order to augment the idea that language builds culture (and vice-versa).  I’d like to be able to give the etymologies of the two words, by my pocket Webster’s is lacking in that area.  Can anyone help?

Thanks a lot.  I am sorry I asked.

LOL, Katy, I think Inanna was hoping for a more thorough
discussion(?) rather than a pointer.

;D

Patricia/AgDrgn

Patricia and Katy -
What I was really looking for, I realized, was not etymology but, more specifically, morphology of the suffixes "ity" and "icate" or whatever that one actually is.  It’s obvious that the root of both words is common (pardon the pun), so to point that out won’t get me anywhere.  I have looked, though, and I can’t seem to find a source of definitions for morphemes.  Do you know of any?

Inanna

It takes a whole community to mess up a good communication?

Well, it seems to me that both connotate a mutuallity of some kind (if such a word exists). In the case of community, it is a bunch of people living as an interacting group. In the case of communications, it is information being passed between an interacting group.

So I guess it is the commonality of "interacting group." Just my HO.

BTW, impressive researching, Katy!

Patricia/AgDrgn

Katy, your research (and I must agree with Patricia that it’s impressive) looked similar to mine when I wandered about in YDc.  I did find a link to this:

Xerox Research Corporation’s Morphological Analyzer for Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, and German.

Unfortunately it no longer exists.

So then I turned to the back of my Mirriam-Webster’s 7th New Collegiate Dictionary from 1961 and found this in the back under "Spelling":

"-ize/-ise.  Ancient Greek has a verb suffix -izein, which descended into postclassical Latin as -izare and into French as -iser. "

It goes on about this suffix but I didn’t find anything about -ate.  I have a hard time believing that nobody has created even so much as a list of suffixes and their indications!  
(meanwhile, that part of my research paper is already written and I’m now interested in this for its own sake)
- inanna

Hey, now! I was by no means accusing you of plagiarism (and to prove my humility I’ll admit that I had to look that word up to spell it!  ack!).  I was just pointing out that we seemed to have come to the same conclusion that YDc doesn’t have what I was looking for.  I think that means we’re both right, especially since you do research as a hobby, and that’s why I went ahead and dealt with that part of my paper.  It’s an incidental thing to the real essence of the paper, which is actually about jazz, and I didn’t want to spend an inappropriate amount of time on it (especially at the expense of the rest - it’s my tendency to get distracted).  
- Inanna

I’m sorry I didn’t catch this thread earlier.  I taught a course in Communication Theory which used this correlation (communicate/community) as its central unifying thread.

John Dewey, in Experience and Nature took up this theme and others have run with it.  There was one excellent article I used that I can’t now remember for the life of me.  I’ll look it up and post it.

Brad

[quote author=Brad Ross-MacLeod link=board=etymology;num=1047101493;start=15#16 date=03/18/03 at 14:26:24][center]...[/center]John Dewey, in Experience and Nature took up this theme and others have run with it.  There was one excellent article I used that I can’t now remember for the life of me.  I’ll look it up and post it.

Been a month, Brad. Still waiting for that article….

Henri