Question: We have Anglophiles and Francophiles and Germanophiles. We have Anglophobes and Francophobes and Germanophobes. We have Anglophones and Francophones, yet there doesn't seem to be a word for a person who speaks German. Or am I searching on the wrong page in the dictionary?
Answer: The omission of a word from the dictionary doesn't mean that it isn't a word. The dictionary does include entries for the combining form "-phone," which means, as you probably know, "speaker of," and for the combining form "Germano-," meaning "German." Put these two together and you have "Germanophone," which is in fact the word used to denote a speaker of German. Dictionaries can't enter all the words formed in this way, of course; those that do get in have attained widespread and common use. But that doesn't preclude anyone using a word like "Germanophone" whenever such use is appropriate, as to refer to the German-speaking population of Switzerland.
For "speaker of" words, the trick is to know the correct initial combining form. (Admittedly, not all have found their way into desk dictionaries.) There is "Italo-" for "Italian," "Russo-" for "Russian," and "Greco-" for "Greek," to name a few. A speaker of Turkish is a "Turcophone"; an Arabic speaker is an "Arabophone." Some are a less obvious: A speaker of Spanish is a "Hispanophone"; of Portuguese, a "Lusophone"; of Chinese, a "Sinophone."
The prominence of "Anglophone" and "Francophone" is no doubt attributable to our neighbors in Quebec. In fact, until recently, to a Quebecker (or Quebecois), every fellow citizen was one or the other of the two, based on which of the two main languages the person spoke primarily. Within the last decade or so a new term has come into use for persons in Quebec whose mother tongue is neither French nor English -- "Allophone," from the Greek root "allos," meaning "other."
Question: When did the medical term "dropsy" originate and when did it stop being used?
Answer: "Dropsy" is a name for the abnormal condition that health-care professionals now call "edema," that is, an excess accumulation of fluid in body tissue or in a body cavity with resultant swelling. In origin it is a shortened form of an earlier "ydropesie," which can be traced back through Old French and Latin to the Greek word for water, "hydor," a word that has many descendants in English, including "hydraulic' and "dehydration." "Dropsy" has no connection at all with the verb "drop," a fact that may surprise some. "Dropsy" first appeared in English more than 700 years ago.
It is harder to say just when "dropsy" began to fade as part of current medical terminology. It continues to appear as an entry in large contemporary medical dictionaries, though it is given less attention there than is "edema," and we have citations in our files from the 1970s and 1980s, though these are not from medical publications and most are historical in their reference. On the other hand, it is labeled old-fashioned in several citations of ours from the 1950s, and as early as 1930 a decision was made to put the main definition at "edema" rather than "dropsy" in our unabridged dictionary (our consulting editor at that time had observed that the medical dictionaries had not yet mustered the courage to make the change). It seems likely, then, that the decline of "dropsy" began no later than the second or third decade of this century.
This column was prepared by the editors of Merriam-Webster's "Collegiate Dictionary," Tenth Edition. Send questions to: Merriam-Webster's Wordwatch, P.O. Box 281, 47 Federal St., Springfield, MA 01102. Merriam-Webster Inc. Dist. by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service