On Language Log a poster (presumably a Democrat. <img src="http://wordcraft.infopop.cc/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif" alt="Wink" width="15" height="15"><!--graemlin:;)-->) made this comment, when referring to his opinion that Harriet Miers's (Supreme Court nominee) bland writings are stylistically and grammatically poor:<BR><BR><I>Miers hasn't just micturated on the grave of Strunk and White; she has desecrated the whole cemetery.</I> <BR><BR>A respondent (presumably a Republican <img src="http://wordcraft.infopop.cc/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif" alt="Wink" width="15" height="15"><!--graemlin:;)-->) says that the complainant, himself, is "stylistically weird" for using the word "micturate." He says that few people know that word. <BR><BR>"Micturate" has been a joke around our family for a number of years because I often use it, along with "void," just to get my family's goat.<BR><BR>How many of you knew this word? I do realize that we have quite a bunch of linguaphiles here, so I expect this will be near 100%.I use it all the time.I have used it, but infrequently.I have never used it, but I knew what it meant.I had to look it up or I knew it from the context.I still have no idea what it means!

Interesting results! I see that I am the only one who uses it frequently.

How interesting that the word is etymologically related to mist and mistletoe.

On the subject of careful choice of terminology ...

When Nature is calling, plain speaking is out,
When ladies' Lord love 'em, are milling about,
You may wee wee, make water, or empty the glass;
You can powder your nose -- even "Johnny" may pass;
Shake the dew off the lilly, see the man 'bout a dog,
Or, when everyone's soused, try condensing the fog,
But be pleased to remember, if you would know bliss,
That only in Shakespeare do characters piss.

A young man looks for the prettiest miss,
To cuddle and hold and snuggle and kiss.
An old man holds no lofty ambition;
He’ll settle for less: a good micturition.


Tinman

Micturition: more than you want to know.

Tinman

From Latin micturio 'to want to urinate'; cf. mingo (mingere, minxi, mictum) 'to urinate' and meio 'to urinate', Greek ομειχω (omeikhō), Sanskrit mehati 'to urinate'.

Interesting that it's "micturate" & "micturating," but then "micturition" and not "micturation."

I was amused that the original question has two people engaged in a pissing match over the word!

[Beware...political opinion coming...] Since the subject of the discussion was Harriet Miers: My daughter said that Bush was trying all along to trick us by nominating Miers to the post. That way, he could easily slip in yet another white male. Seems plausible...

Anyway, the selections above are very interesting. Usually they aren't so divided. I was surprised that 3 (though I was one of them) people use micturate "all the time." I use it often, but it is because I enjoy annoying my family. Were the other two just being funny, or do you really use it often?

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Interesting that it's "micturate" & "micturating," but then "micturition" and not "micturation."

Oddly, this question came up in the APS forum. See http://pub18.bravenet.com/forum/1486811524/show/715094 (scroll down to Barry's post of Nov 7).

Apparently the name for this phenomenon is ablaut.

quote:

Apparently the name for this phenomenon is ablaut.

There is a phenomenon called ablaut, but this is not a case of it. A better example of ablaut is the English series of verbal forms for to sing: sing, sang, and sung. (This is also sometimes called vowel gradation.) What you have in the English verb micturate is an incorrect form. As I said above, there are two verbs in Latin meio and micturio. They meant two different things. The former means to urinate and tha latter means to want to urinate. If you take a peak inside the OED, you'll see the two properly formed nouns miction and micturition. The latter, even in the 19th century had ceased to be a desire to pass water and become the act of urination itself. The replacement of the first i wih an a is just a mistake, but a natural one. Most Latin verbs derived from the past particple are -ate verbs and not -ite ones. This process in language change is usually called analogy.

Interesting, Zmj. I have never heard "analogy" used that way. Here's what AHD says about that linguistic definition of "analogy:"

Linguistics The process by which words or morphemes are re-formed or created on the model of existing grammatical patterns in a language, often leading to greater regularity in paradigms, as evidenced by helped replacing holp and holpen as the past tense and past participle of help on the model of verbs such as yelp, yelped, yelped.

Question: In this case, the change was for less, not greater, regularity, right? I mean, wouldn't "micturation" and "micturate" be more logical?

Yes, and the more regular micturate ~ micturation is what the language moved to. The old word micturition shared an ending with only a few others, like attrition, contrition, perdition, so shifted to the much more widespread and productive suffix -ation.

Analogy removes irregularities that have arisen for other reasons. In this case, micturition existed because it was taken from Latin, where the choice of vowel in the ending is more grammatically significant. English only uses the -a- endings in any significant (i.e. productive) way.

quote:

In this case, the change was for less, not greater, regularity, right? I mean, wouldn't "micturation" and "micturate" be more logical?

I meant that the present forms in English were by a process of analogy. Latin had four different verbal paradigms (i.e., conjugations), and the formation of mictio 'urination' from mictus 'urinated' and micturitio 'desiring to urinate' from micturitus 'desired to urinate' are regular in Latin. In English, most latinate verbs end in -ate and have nominal forms in -ation. Because micturition seemed an anomaly may have been a reason it was changed to micturation. Take another example, the comparative and superlative of the adjective good is suppletive: good, better, and best. Some non-standard dialect have made this more logical by reducing the forms to good, gooder, goodest.

[Fixed typo.]

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

Snap.

Well, I am a little befuddled by "snap," but then I am often befuddled, so what else is new?

I am at a conference with nursing students, and I heard a student outside a bar (obviously she had drunk a few beers) say, "Oh...my bladder is distended!"