While I'm complaining, has anyone noted the emergence of the word "impotency"? To me the noun should be "impotence" and the adjective is "impotent". I don't see an need for another noun describing the condition of being impotent. For example, a violent person exhibits the condition known as violence, not "violency".
see A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, H. W. Fowler
LOVE OF THE LONG WORD. ... Mr. Pecksniff, we are told, was in the frequent habit of using any word that occurred to him as having a good sound, and rounding a sentence well, without much care for its meaning. He still has his followers. ...
LONG VARIANTS. 'The better the writer, the shorter his words' would be a statement needing many exceptions for individual persons and particular subjects; but for all that it would be broadly true, especially about English writers. Those who run to long words are mainly the unskilful and tasteless; they confuse pomposity with dignity, flaccidity with ease, and bulk with force; see LOVE OF THE LONG WORD. A special form of long word is now to be illustrated. When a word for the notion wanted exists, some people (1) forget or do not know that word, and make up another from the same stem with an extra suffix or two; or (2) are not satisfied with a mere current word, and resolve to decorate it, also with an extra suffix; or (3) have heard a longer form that resembles it, and are not aware that this other form is appropriated to another sense. Cases of (1) and (2) are often indistinguishable; the motive differs, but the result is the same; and they will here be mixed together ... .
(1) and (2). Needless lengthenings of established words due to oversight or caprice: administrate (administer); assertative (assertive); contumacity (contumacy); cultivatable (cultivable); dampen (damp, v.); denunciate (denounce); dubiety (doubt); epistolatory (epistolary); experimentalize (experiment, v.); extemporaneously (ex tempore); filtrate (filter, v.); [my own particular peeve] preventative (preventive); quieten (quiet, v.); transportation (transport). |
