Etymology -- inter

This between becomes a bury (meanings change when stresses vary). What word 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: 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."

Thanks to Jack Ognistoff for a great MooT question.

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)

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While certainly knowing what "inter" means, i.e. both between and bury", I never thought of both acceptances at the same time. Thanks anyway.

x- jowolfar-@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...

x-JonAlexandr-@aol.com

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Great question! Tricky!

x-belstrauss-@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.

x-j4tay2001-@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.

x-vsv818-@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?"

True. For simplicity's sake, I stuck with "word" because MooT is a game, not a treatise.

x-jacko-@lycos.com

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I concur with the MooTguy: thank you mister Ognistoff.

x-voltzt-@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.

x-redgilette-@-yahoo.com

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