Saturday, June 17, 2006

more than one prefix

I was thinking, why is more than one prefix called "prefixes."
Wouldn't it be correct to call them "prefaces"? Does that mean that the word "preface" came before "prefix," since it's plural overrides the rules that would give "prefix" the same plural form?

3 comments:

PopStar said...

on those same lines: 'cherry' - i mean, who came up with that crazy word?

Chaka said...

I'm not sure why one would pluralize prefix as prefaces. Is this an analogy on appendix/appendices? If so, it would be prefices, not prefaces. Next question.

Chaka said...

Regarding cherry--I think they can take that one back to Proto-Indo-European. Of course, it's only natural for cherries and PIE to go together.