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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Still chuckling over the co-insides piece, and Peter’s “shared giblets†…
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The notion “co-terminous†is an interesting parallel in some ways. The two most common basic meanings, which apply to spatial regions or periods of time, are rather contradictory: “contiguous, having a common terminus/boundaryâ€, i.e., “lying on opposite sides of a boundary,†and “coinciding as to boundariesâ€, i.e. “occupying the same spaceâ€. (Maybe Co-outsides instead of co-insides?)
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The second of these two usages invites a semantic re-structuring: I know of several who confess to having understood it to mean “synonymous, being another term for the same thing.†There is no phonological or orthographic clue in the word itself to this reshaping having taken place. Not uncommonly the context is not much of a help either, though sometimes it does help a bit:
The Indian laws make a distinction between what we may call the �Hindu in the broad sense�, to whom Hindu Law applies, and who is coterminous with the Hindu of Persian-Islamic usage, viz. every Indian Pagan; and the �Hindu in the narrow sense�, a category which may not include Buddhism and Sikhism.
For some English people English identity is coterminous with British identity.
A similar “hidden eggcorn-ish†restructuring may be at work where the modified noun is a period of time when one is in office or when a document is in force:
The term of this furniture and fixtures lease is coterminous with that of the office lease, which is a separate document.
The members thereafter appointed by the Governor shall serve a term of office of four (4) years which is coterminous with the term of office of
Here the notion may be “valid during the same term (of time)†as opposed to “another term for the same†or the standard “having the same boundariesâ€. It is hard to tell, though, and I do not have perps’ confessions for this one.
A more overtly eggcornish (and quite common) usage may be the following, where there is an orthographic (though not, for most of us, a phonological) difference that may indicate a reshaping:
the verses are not necessarily coterminus with sentence boundaries.
Law does not fix membership size and terms are co-terminus with the mayor. ... Nine members, terms co-terminus with the Mayor (includes one ex-officio
substantially co-extensive and co-terminus with the base portion of said bag member and the back portion of said support member
The -us/-ous spelling difference is not a salient one to many who write English, so this may be a simple spelling shift for many, but I expect that for some it is a real shift from adjectival -ous to nominal -us, and the meaning would be “having the same endpoint / terminusâ€.
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(There are of course many other -us/-ous pairs: e.g. humerus/humerous/humorous, callus/callous, and so forth.)
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2009-01-24 14:17:55)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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