This between becomes a bury (meanings change when stresses vary). What word
is it?
Etymology, Etymology, and more Etymology
as well as grammar, usage, euphemism, slang, jargon, semantics, linguistics, neologism, idiom, cant, and argot.
The critically-acclaimed board game
MooT
consists of tough questions about the nuances of the English language.
Answer:
inter
As a prefix (stress on the first
syllable) inter means "between"; as a
transitive verb (stress on the second syllable) inter means "to bury."
[Mootguy: Thanks to Jack Ognistoff
for a great MooT question.]
Feedback
While certainly knowing what
"inter" means, i.e. both between and bury", I never thought of both acceptances
at the same time. Thanks anyway.
jowolfar at yahoo.com.ar
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And if there were a net used as a burial shroud, it might be called
an inTER net...
JonAlexandr at aol.com
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Great question! Tricky!
belstrauss at yahoo.com
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Reminds me of invalid - not valid - and invalid - person suffering
from disease or disability. Just a matter of which syllable you stress.
j4tay2001 at yahoo.com
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Whether this is standard American
pronunciation or not, I've heard quite frequently here on the east coast a
stress difference that takes place depending upon which noun the adjective is
modifying. CERebral palsy and ceREbral hemorrhage.
vsv818 at comcast.net
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To get pedantic on you, strictly speaking the first "inter" is not a
word, but a morpheme--an indivisible semantic unit which . It isn't a word
since it can't stand on its own. The second "inter" is both a word and (at
least, I think so) a morpheme. Thus, the better (but granted, more pedantic)
question would be "What semantic unit is it?"
[Mootguy: True. For simplicity's sake, I stuck with "word"
because MooT is a game, not a treatise.]
jacko at lycos.com
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I concur with the MooTguy: thank you mister Ognistoff.
voltzt at lafayette.edu
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This was a fun one! I got it in about 15
seconds, which I think is pretty good. Technically, all words are free
morphemes (with the exception of things like borrowed latinate phrases such as
"quid pro quo"--quo is not a "word", it behaves more like a syllable); "inter"
is a bound morpheme that cannot stand alone. But since most people are not
linguistics scholars, it's ok to call it a "word" for the sake of the riddle.
Thanks to everyone for the interesting discussion.
redgilette at yahoo.com
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