Etymology of the word "geocide"

Originally I believed that there was no word for Earth-destruction in the English language, and felt that it was permissible to invent my own. Taking the prefix "geo-" meaning "Earth" and the suffix "-cide", meaning "kill", I formed the word "geocide".

It turns out the situation is rather more complicated than I first imagined. "Geo-" is a modern Greek prefix while "-cide" is an ancient Latin suffix, which doesn't match! Plus, the word "mundicide" already exists and has roughly the same meaning! What to do?

Words for Earth

Words for destruction

Possibilities

Given these, we have the following possibilities:

I ultimately chose "geocide". It is obvious to most people what this means, and it didn't already exist, so I can claim credit for creating it. Also, while it is a combination of modern Greek and ancient Latin, there are plenty of these already in existence - the most notable being "television" - so there's no need to reject it on this score.

Back to Blog
Back to Things Of Interest
StumbleUpon Reddit Facebook Digg Twitter del.icio.us Email