John,
Thanks for the interesting detailed etymology. My goal for the word was
purely practical, to avoid clumsy phrases in writing about the work I was
doing. So I made no effort to make the spelling or pronunciation adhere
closely to the Greek origins. I like simple, so one "g" was enough. I had
the accent on the second syllable: is-AG-el-ous, and for the objects which
were isagelous, on the first syllable I-sa-gel (analogous to I'so-mer). As
far as I can tell, it was never actually used by anyone else (the on-line
dictionary entries are bogus, created by me when I digitized the 1913
Webster, as a way of finding where the 1913 Webster was being used. It is
the only made-up word I added). (01)
Actually, originally I was looking for a word meaning "same sequence"
(sequence of nucleotides in a DNA molecule) but the ancient Greek speaker I
consulted didn't know of any Greek word for "sequence" other than sequence
of succession of kings. I decided that "same information" was closer to
the meaning I was looking for anyway. (02)
I wasn't anticipating scrutiny by a Greek and Persian scholar! ;-) (03)
Pat (04)
Patrick Cassidy
MICRA, Inc.
908-561-3416
cell: 908-565-4053
cassidy@xxxxxxxxx (05)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
> Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2009 10:02 AM
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] RDF & RDFS (was... Is there something I
> missed?)
>
> Pat (C & H),
>
> PC>> I had occasion, years back when I was doing DNA research, to
> >> coin a term "isagelous" to refer to abstract informational
> >> objects that have the same information content, but in different
> >> physical or syntactic form. It is from Greek, "iso" meaning
> >> "same" and "agelos" meaning "information".
>
> PH> Useful word, to be sure.... is it pronounced i-SA-gelous or
> > isa-GEL-ous?
>
> The etymology is interesting:
>
> 1. The Persians had a word 'aggaros', which meant a mounted
> courier who distributed dispatches for the Persian empire.
>
> 2. The Greeks borrowed the word 'aggaros' with the same
> meaning, from which they made many derivatives.
>
> 3. In various Greek dialects, the A became E and the R
> became L. That produced the variant 'aggelos' for
> messenger and 'aggelia' for 'message' or 'news'.
>
> 4. By classical times, the GG combination continued to be
> spelled GG, but the first G was nasalized. So the
> Latin transliterations were 'angelus' and 'angelia'.
>
> In any case, it's necessary to keep both Gs or to make
> the first one N, because the Greek 'agele' means 'herd'.
> Therefore, 'isagelous' would mean 'from the same herd'.
>
> There is also a problem with the ending '-ous', which
> is from Latin. The Greek adjectival form would end
> in '-ikos', which becomes the English '-ic'.
>
> Therefore, the correct term would be 'isaggelic'. The
> form 'isangelic' would also be permissible, but it might
> cause confusion with the word 'angelic', which is used
> for a more specialized kind of messenger.
>
> John
>
>
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