We've all heard of hyperparenting, helicopter parenting, and overparenting, but have you heard of kindergarchy ? I hadn't. These terms were mentioned in this great article about why French parents are better than American parents.

[Edited typo; kinderarchy changed to kindergarchy.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

Some people pedants dislike words like television because they are a hybrid of classical Latin and Greek. I shudder to think how they'd feel about a word like kindergarchy, thrown together from German and Latin roots.

I am currently reading the book in question, but have not seen kinderarchy in it yet. (I have seen the other terms in the book though.) I read a different article a while back and ordered a copy from some bookstore in the UK (which offered free shipping to the USA). It was sitting at my desk at work after receiving it and unpacking it, and started a couple of discussions about parenting.

I, personally, like mixing roots from different languages together to make new words. Latin was never above borrowing and adapting words from Greek, and vice versa.

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:
kindergarchy, thrown together from German and Latin Greek roots.

How about paedarchy.

kindergarchy sounds better to me than kinderarchy even though it contains the g from the olig- of oligarchy (or maybe from garten.)

quote:

Originally posted by goofy:

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:
kindergarchy, thrown together from German and Latin Greek roots.

How about paedarchy.

kindergarchy sounds better to me than kinderarchy even though it contains the g from the olig- of oligarchy (or maybe from garten.)

Whoops! I meant Greek, of course. The word used in the article and link (and in the title of this thread) has the g - I suspect Kalleh's use of kinderarchy was a typo. As you say, the version with the g sounds better.

Were we to expunge mongrel words from English we'd have no language.

Yes, sorry about that; it was a typo. I have corrected it.

Interesting, goofy, that you should bring up one of my favorite words, oligarchy. I posted about that word way back here. As you can see, arnie and I were here even then.