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From: Einde O'Callaghan <eindeoc@freenet.de>
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Re: Female homosexuality = lesbianism. - Male sexuality = ?-ism
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:17:03 +0200
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Thomas Hejl Pilgaard wrote:
> 1. Is there a word for male sexuality than ends in -ism?
> Gayism doesn't seem to work.
>
> A friend of mine claims that it is in fact "homosexualism",
> since homo means man (which I don't quite agree with), meaning
> that homosexualism means sex among men, and homo sapiens means
> the thinking man.
>
The prefix "homo-" in homosexual doesn't come from the Latin word "homo"
meaning "man", but from a Greek word "homo" or "homeo" (in Roman
letters) meaning "same" - homosexuality means means "being attracted to
one's own sex" and can refer both to men an women.
> So either there is no -ism word for male homosexuality, or there
> is no common word for gayness and lesbianism... ?
>
The common word for gayness and lesbianism is homosexuality.
Incidentally originally in the early 1970s when "gay" came into common
usage, it was often used to refer to lesbians too.
> 2. Is there a common designation/name for words that end in -ism?
>
Why should there be? - there's no common designation for words that end
in "-er" or "-le".
Regards, Einde O'Callaghan
> ...The things you ponder at 3am...
>
>
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