# Latin vīcīnia/vīcīnitās, and similar pairings.



## Michael Zwingli

Hello, and good day. I recently came across an unusual circumstance: two Latin words derived from the same root stem, having exactly the same meaning, but differing in construction by being appended with different suffixes (which suffixes convey identical senses): _vīcīnia_ and _vīcīnitās, _both meaning "nearness"/"proximity"/"vicinity", or "neighborhood". I am primarily wondering what such a pairing of words is called. The term "cognates" definitely doesn't apply, since the root stem exists in the language of formation, rather than coming from an ancestor language, and both _vīcīnia_ and _vīcīnitās_ are Latin lemmas. I am unsure that they could be called "doublets" of one another, since I don't think that "doublets" technically can differ by having different constituent morphemes, which is the case here, but rather that a pair of doublets usually differ only by historical differences in pronunciation and regional orthography. (I could be wrong about this...I remember that I was wrong about something once in my life, a very long time ago) What would be the proper linguistic term for such a pair of direct synonyms from the same root differing only by affixation?


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## Catagrapha

Alternative forms: -ia  -ies -tas  -tus -itudo, e.g., materia materies, sanctitas sanctitudo, tempestas tempestus


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## Michael Zwingli

I can't think of any other examples of this in Latin, but there are examples within English, for instance the adjectives _manly_ and _mannish_ (both meaning "having the characteristics typical of a man"), and from the area of onomastics, the English surnames _Williamson_ and _Fitzwilliam_ (both meaning "son of William"). Of course, all of these are examples of synonyms, but they seem to be more than synonyms in cases where the root or "base" lemma is the same. Note that in Latin, _possum_ and _queō_ are direct synonyms (they are fully synonymous, with both meaning "I am able"/"I can"), but they share no etymological morphemes (_possum_ < _potis_ “able, capable” + _sum_ “I am”, and _queō_ < _nequeō_. "I an unable" < _neque_ "not"+‎ _eō_ "I advance/proceed"). In like manner, English _masculine_ is a direct synonym of _manly_ and _mannish_, but seems to be excluded from the relationship of closeness that _manly_ and _mannish_ share because of their common root.  The relationship of Latin _vīcīnia_ and _vīcīnitās_ , and of English _manly_ and _mannish_ seems to be more than merely synonymous...somehow closer, since they are derived from the same root or base word. What I am wondering is if there is a special term within linguistics for such synonymous pairs as are represented by Latin _vīcīnia_ and _vīcīnitās_, English _manly_ and _mannish_, etc., or for this phenomenon.


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## jimquk

Michael Zwingli said:


> for instance the adjectives _manly_ and _mannish_ (both meaning "having the characteristics typical of a man")



But manly and mannish are not synonymous: some men are considered manly, but only women might be called mannish, and rather pejoratively; similarly, a womanly woman, but a womanish man.

I wonder also whether your Latin example is truly synonymous.


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## pollohispanizado

Were both these words used the same, aside from being synonymous? I wonder if there was a geographical difference (or maybe a register difference, since only vīcīnitās gained new life in Romance languages as far as I know). I remember seeing words in Spanish with the same root that differed only in the deverbalizing suffixes preferred in each place (-miento and -ción, for example. Unfortunately I don't remember the specific word.)




jimquk said:


> I wonder also whether your Latin example is truly synonymous.


At least based on my quick look on Wiktionary, they are synonymous. However I guess that doesn't necessarily mean that they were completely when they were being used.


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## Catagrapha

Latin: rusticus rusticanus, Spartanus Spartiates,  Athenaeus Atheniensis, ...
English: illusive illusory, geographic geographical, leisured leisurely, aspirant aspiring, prolificacy prolificity, meticulosity meticulousness, ...


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## pollohispanizado

Spanish has _femenino_, _femíneo_, and _femenil_, all synonyms meaning "feminine". According to la Real Academia Española, all three come directly from Latin (_feminīnus, femineus, feminīlis), _so it might have been a fairly common phenomenon to have multiple synonymous doublets derived directly from the same root (I know, two examples doesn't exactly make a pattern, but I suspect there are more).


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## jazyk

pollohispanizado said:


> miento and -ción, for example. Unfortunately I don't remember the specific word.)


Financiación and financiamiento, for example.


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## Michael Zwingli

jimquk said:


> But manly and mannish are not synonymous: some men are considered manly, but only women might be called mannish, and rather pejoratively; similarly, a womanly woman, but a womanish man. I wonder also whether your Latin example is truly synonymous.


You are not entirely incorrect, but I think that you might be imposing the constraints of _usage_ ,which is determined by social custom, upon _meaning_, which is determined by etymology. The suffixes -ly and -ish are semantically very close, they carry very nearly the same meaning. While it is true that "manly" is customarily used for men while "mannish" is (often pejoratively) applied to women, both manly and mannish (and "manlike" as well, for that matter) mean, etymologically: "resembling, or having the characteristics typical of, a man". While not the customary usages, it would not be semantically incorrect to say that a man is mannish, or that a woman is manly, though it might raise an eyebrow or two... As for the two Latin lemmas, they both mean "nearness"/"proximity"/"vicinity", or "neighborhood". The abstract noun forming suffixes _-ia_ and _-itās_ are directly synonymous, and carry the same set of meanings to the adjectives upon which they are appended, roughly equivalent to the English suffixes "-ness" and "-ity", e.g. _ignavia_ ("laziness", "idleness", "inactivity"), _amāritās_ ("bitterness", "harshness"), _fidēlitās_ ("faithfulness", "fidelity"). I think that _pollohispanizado_ might be on to the source of the coexistence of these two lemmas:


pollohispanizado said:


> I wonder if there was a geographical difference (or maybe a register difference, since only vīcīnitās gained new life in Romance languages as far as I know). I remember seeing words in Spanish with the same root that differed only in the deverbalizing suffixes preferred in each place (-miento and -ción, for example. Unfortunately I don't remember the specific word.)


The suffix _-itās_ came into Latin through Proto-Italic, whence from the original PIE _*-teh₂ts_. The suffix _-ia_ seems to have been borrowed into Latin from Ancient Greek -ίᾱ, which had an identical function within Greek and was itself from PIE _*-i-eh₂._ One is prompted to ask why _-ia_ was borrowed into Latin if it already had _-itās_ "in the family", as it was. Within Latin, they each seem to have had several usual applications, which applications overlapped in some places. Both were affixed to first and second declension adjectives, with the exception of second declension adjectives in -osus, which seem to have only been suffixed with _-itās_. Third declension adjectives in _-is_, as well, only took _-itās_, while participles and third declension "participlar" adjectives in _-ens_, as well as those in _-ax_ took _-ia_. The base of these two Latin lemmas, _vīcīnus_, is a second declension adjective, meaning that both _-ia_ and _-itās_ were acceptable to create the deadjectival abstract. _Vīcīnia_ and _vīcīnitās_ were probably formed in different places, at different times, and by different people, one using the old Italic suffix, and one using the Greek borrowing.


Catagrapha said:


> Latin: rusticus rusticanus, Spartanus Spartiates,  Athenaeus Atheniensis, ...
> English: illusive illusory, geographic geographical, leisured leisurely, aspirant aspiring, prolificacy prolificity, meticulosity meticulousness, ...


Great examples; thanks for the effort! My question, which is the subject of all this discussion, still remains: what are such pairings called by linguists? I think that there must be a term for them, and I don't think that "doublet" is that term. Perhaps "synonymous cognates"? Ahvalj might be able to answer this. I keep hoping he'll check in to this thread...


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## pollohispanizado

Monorhizic synonymous cognates? (Just a guess...)


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## Michael Zwingli

pollohispanizado said:


> Monorhizic synonymous cognates? (Just a guess...)


Hahahaha!!! Why, because they have "only one lemon in their fruit bag"?? This is what I found when I "Googled" _monorhizic_: Monorchism - Wikipedia.  I think you must have misspelled what you were suggesting, as Merriam-Webster online didn't have this word, either.


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## pollohispanizado

I invented it as far as I know from Greek roots (and I think I did mispell it haha). _Mono_- (one) + _rizo_- (root) [cf. Sp. rizotónico]. Monoradical, maybe?... Just throwing ideas out until somebody comes up with the answer. 😂


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## Michael Zwingli

pollohispanizado said:


> Just throwing ideas out until somebody comes up with the answer. 😂


Aaaahhh..."good looks", as they say. I think that I need Ahvalj on this one, though. He's usually "money" on such questions, from my experience.


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## jimquk

Michael Zwingli said:


> You are not entirely incorrect, but I think that you might be imposing the constraints of _usage_ ,which is determined by social custom, upon _meaning_, which is determined by etymology. The suffixes -ly and -ish are semantically very close, they carry very nearly the same meaning. While it is true that "manly" is customarily used for men while "mannish" is (often pejoratively) applied to women, both manly and mannish (and "manlike" as well, for that matter) mean, etymologically: "resembling, or having the characteristics typical of, a man". While not the customary usages, it would not be semantically incorrect to say that a man is mannish, or that a woman is manly, though it might raise an eyebrow or two...



I beg to differ. Meaning is not determined by etymology, and does depend on usage. There are endless examples of words whose meanings have deviated from their etymology, as I'm sure you know.

And the point is that a "manly" woman would not mean the same as a mannish woman. Although they are both adjectives derived from man, their meanings are similar but not the same. One contains within in the notion of praiseworthy, fitting, the other implies inappropriateness. I think that that is central to the meaning of the two words, in parallel to womanly, womanish, and not just a matter of usage. 

Similarly, I doubt that the other examples given are true synonyms. Perhaps flammable/inflammable?


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## Catagrapha

Michael Zwingli said:


> what are such pairings called by linguists?


Some lexica say collateral forms, like pratum & pratus, πόλις & πτόλις.


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## Michael Zwingli

jimquk said:


> I beg to differ. Meaning is not determined by etymology, and does depend on usage. There are endless examples of words whose meanings have deviated from their etymology, as I'm sure you know...


Upon consideration, your point is well taken. I was wrong about that, and hasty in my judgements. I think that "meaning" might have different senses, as that word pertains to lexemes; perhaps there is "etymological meaning", which is by nature unchangeable, and...what..._derived meaning_ (?), which can change by custom and usage.


jimquk said:


> Similarly, I doubt that the other examples given are true synonyms.


I just checked again, and the two lemmas which spurred my queries, _vīcīnia_ and _vīcīnitās_, are fully synonymous according to Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary, quite a reliable source for Latin semantics.


Catagrapha said:


> Some lexica say collateral forms, like pratum & pratus, πόλις & πτόλις.


Great examples of this. Unlike _vīcīnia_ and _vīcīnitās_, though, _prātum_ and _prātus_ were not created within Latin or Proto-Italic, but rather, they seem to have descended into Latin from PIE through Proto-Italic. I think the reason for that is that _prātus_ <(ultimately)  PIE _*preh₂-*(é)-tus_ , which was a deverbal noun, and _prātum_ < Proto-Italic _*prātos_ (via substantivization of the nominative neuter declentive within Proto-Italic) < PIE _*preh₂-*(Ø)-tós_, which was a deverbal adjective. This represents a slightly different situation from _vīcīnia_ and _vīcīnitās_, which were both created within either Latin or Proto-Italic. Even so, I think that your example holds as examples of the same phenomenon. (Perhaps the foregoing is TMI, but I enjoy thinking about these things...)
I like "collateral forms". It is an appropriate term. "Alternate forms" would be another. Still wonder if there is anything else, though. Perhaps a more "sexy" linguistic term?


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## Catagrapha

Michael Zwingli said:


> I like "collateral forms". It is an appropriate term. "Alternate forms" would be another. Still wonder if there is anything else, though. Perhaps a more "sexy" linguistic term?


One sexy type of alternative form is with alternative order of the stems of a compound, e.g.,
spatiotemporal temporospatial, lunisolar solilunar, frontonasal nasofrontal


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## pollohispanizado

It kind of looks like Catagrapha hit the nail on the head with "collateral form". From Wiktionary: (linguistics) A synonymous but not identical, coexisting form (variation) of a word, such as an accepted alternative spelling.

Looking on latin.stackexchange.com, somebody asked a similar question (actually it was "What is meant by 'collateral' in dictionaries?" with the following example.



> _ŭtĕrus, i_, m. (*collat*. form _ŭter_, Caecil. ap. Non. 188, 15; neutr. *collat*. form _ŭtĕ-rum, i_, Plaut. Aul. 4, 7, 10, acc. to Non. 229, 33; Turp. and Afran. ib.) [Sanscr. uttara, later; Gr. ὕστερος; cf. Gr. ὑστέρα, womb; Sanscr. udaram, belly; Engl. udder], the womb, matrix (syn. volva).



The contested etymology of _ŭtĕrus _aside, somebody over there might have an answer for you (that is, if @ahvalj doesn't have one). At least we can see that "collateral form" is a term that is used in the context of the Latin lexicon.


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## Michael Zwingli

pollohispanizado said:


> It kind of looks like Catagrapha hit the nail on the head with "collateral form". From Wiktionary: (linguistics) A synonymous but not identical, coexisting form (variation) of a word, such as an accepted alternative spelling. Looking on latin.stackexchange.com, somebody asked a similar question (actually it was "What is meant by 'collateral' in dictionaries?" with the following example./QUOTE]


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## Awwal12

Michael Zwingli said:


> You are not entirely incorrect, but I think that you might be imposing the constraints of _usage_ ,which is determined by social custom, upon _meaning_, which is determined by etymology.


Meaning is by no means _determined_ by etymology (otherwise there would be no semantic shifts to begin with; suffice it to say, English "gift" and German "Gift" have not only identical etrymology but also nearly identical phonetic shape, and yet mean something entirely different). And even if we consider pure semantics, "manly" and "mannish" aren't synonymous at all.
Manly: 1. Having the characteristics of a man. 2. Having qualities befitting a man; courageous, resolute, noble. (From Wiktionary, which is good enough.)
Mannish:  Resembling or characteristic of a man while not being one or pertaining to one. (The second part is really an inherent part of the word's semantics, and it's not unique; -ish often attaches that kind of meaning to the words which it forms.)


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## Sobakus

pollohispanizado said:


> Spanish has _femenino_, _femíneo_, and _femenil_, all synonyms meaning "feminine". According to la Real Academia Española, all three come directly from Latin (_feminīnus, femineus, feminīlis), _so it might have been a fairly common phenomenon to have multiple synonymous doublets derived directly from the same root (I know, two examples doesn't exactly make a pattern, but I suspect there are more).


RAE's dictionary doesn't specify whether the word is borrowed or inherited, so it shouldn't be consulted for etymology. Out of these three, all are borrowed - compare the Castilian outcome of _fēmina_, which is _hembra_.

I wouldn't call these "collateral" forms - this IMO is properly said of morphologically identical formations. The phenomenon in question is so common that it doesn't seem to have a term of its own, so I'd call them simply synonyms. Cicero is famous for his frivolous coining of such terms when translating Greek terms, e.g. _beātitās_ and _beātitūdō_. There simply was no abstract noun from _beātus._ The Spanish examples look to be the same kind of learnèd vocabulary, and so I can believe that they're close to perfectly synonymous, albeit still not 100%. This seems to be what* Michael Zwingli* calls "etymological meaning" that isn't supposed to change - but surely does. Those terms that are widely adopted by usage quickly acquire stylistic and semantic differences to the point that one can't properly call them synonymous any more, albeit they tend to do that in concert with other words of the same derivation/suffix, in this way preserving their "etymological meaning" as long as their morphemic make-up remains transparent, and lose it in short order when it no longer is.


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## Catagrapha

I'm thinking of _biform _or _dimorphous _(or its variant _dimorphic_).
I've seen one type of biform/dimorphous called lengthened form, e.g., Neustria Neustrasia, Διοσημία Διοσημασία.


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