Etymology -- television

When the editor of the Manchester Guardian first heard the neologism in 1928, he exclaimed: "The word is half Greek and half Latin ? no good will come of it"; what device-name is it?

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A picture of a moot game

The critically-acclaimed board game MooT consists of tough questions about the nuances of the English language.

Answer: television

The inventor, John Baird, coined the name by combining the Greek tele, distant, with the Latin vision, seeing.

Some language purists ? i.e., the ones who prefer that newly-made words be constructed from same-language roots ? wished the device had been called either the teleopsis or proculvision. Of course, those who watch proculvision should eat PV Dinners and subscribe to the PV Guide.

Please note that these are draft questions for the board game MooT.
If you spot an error or disagree with anything I've said here,
please let me know and I'll fix it.
(the Mootguy)

Feedback

The same dilemma confronted us when we were looking for a name the new quantum-physics effect we discovered in 1993. We called it quantum teleportation, over the objections of one of my coauthors, who thought it should be called quantum telepheresis. I overcame his objections by arguing that teleportation was already a well established word in the science fiction literature. For more details see: http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation

x-(Charles H. Bennett)

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