quote:

At any rate, I give up. Richard, if you wish to think there was some intermediate word, such as "ceram" in order for "ceramist" to have been formed, go ahead and think that. I assume you must also think there was an intermediate word "flaut" before "flautist" was formed and "flut" before "flutist" was formed, since English, in your opinion, is just so logical at all times.

I never said there was a word; I said "...There is an intermediate stage where the "non-word" "ceram" appears...".

I have never said that the word "ceramist" doesn't derive from "ceramic"; I said that the directly derived word is "ceramicist".

As has been cited here by others, there are other examples of words that have gone through an intermediate stage and where the stress seems to vary for that reason.

It is not a question of wrong or right; I was simply theorising as to why the stress on "ceramicist" is agreed by all, whereas the stress on "ceramist" can vary. I thought I had made my thoughts clear, having given similar examples of words where the stress had shifted in much the same why but if not, then I, like Kalleh, will give up ;-(

I assumed they were related, being about the same instrument.

They are related, CW. I'm just saying that the two different words were borrowed at different times from two different languages. That is, nobody borrowed flute and then asked "how can I confuse people?"; "aha, by adding -ist to a changed stem."

quote:

I was simply theorising as to why the stress on "ceramicist" is agreed by all, whereas the stress on "ceramist" can vary.

My poor computer.

Obviously I was 100% wrong about "flautist," Zmj. I am sorry. I should have looked it up, as that makes perfect sense. For the record, though, I didn't think it was borrowed to "confuse people." That's not what I think about "ceramist" and "ceramicist," either. I just think it interesting that there are 2 very similar words that mean the same thing, and since this is a word board...

Interestingly the OED cites quotes from ceramist first (1855), while the first quote from ceramicist is 1930. I don't know if that's when they were first used or not. The OED cites the derivation for both words as: [f. CERAMIC + -IST.], and to me that indicates there was never any "intermediate stage."

I am going to email Nathan Bierma to see if he knows any more about the derivations of these 2 word. Etymology.com has neither word, and the dictionaries just seem to parrot the OED.

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I wonder whether "ceramicist" is actually a spelling error that has gained currency and eventual acceptance?

I suspect that a similar thing is happening to "restaurateur" (3,540,000 ghits) which seems frequently to be rendered as "restauranteur" (340,000 ghits). OK, only 10% the number but significant nevertheless. Or was restauranteur the original spelling?

French (noun from present participle) restaurant 'restoring; restaurant', (agent noun) restaurateur 'restorer; person who runs a restaurant'. In re ceramicist, the OED (first edition) does not have ceramicist listed in the main part of the dictionary, only ceramean adj. 'having to do with ceramics', ceramist, ceramics, and ceramology, all coined in mid-19th century. The appendix (of added words and definitions) has ceramicist from a single 1930 quotation in the Observer. I figure ceramist was too confusing for the people, who subsequently coined and use ceramicist. (I believe the reason that both are derived from ceramics is because that was the first word coined.) You see phenomena like this all the time in language: e.g., back formation of orientate from orientation, burgle from burglar, pleonastic lesser from comparative less (cf. *gooder ~ better), etc.

Very interesting. As you say, this sort of thing happens a lot.

In motorcycle sport machines are all subject to scrutiny to ensure that they are safe to be allowed to compete. The person who undertakes the task is known as a scrutineer. Although there is a perfectly good verb - scrutinize - to describe the action of subjecting something to scrutiny, the activity is generally known in the sport as "scrutineering", not scrutinizing as one would expect.

Thanks for that, zmj. I only had the online version of the OED, which had that same single 1930 quote for "ceramicist." I think your analysis is correct. On the forum where this discussion started, the person was a ceramicist, and she indicated that "ceramicist" is more commonly used today.

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Here's what Bierma says: "
"Nancy,

I'm afraid I have no idea, but I'll bet Anatoly Liberman does, and might even be interested in blogging about it at his oup.com blog ... he's cc'd on this message. Anatoly?

Thanks,

Nathan"

But, here's what Anatoly says: "Dear Nathan,
Alas, I know nothing about these words, and no one does (if this is a comfort), but I would think that they were coined independently of each other, without any intermediate stages.
Best,
Anatoly"

I will have to check on his blog, though, that particular link didn't work for me. I have written Liberman in the past about other language questions.

quote:

Alas, I know nothing about these words, and no one does (if this is a comfort), but I would think that they were coined independently of each other, without any intermediate stages.

Indeed. This seems to be the case from what Zm said.

My assumption that "ceramist" came from "ceramicist" was obviously wrong if this further information is accurate.

I wonder whether the other words that were cited, where the pronunciation appeared to change when the spelling changed, are also examples of parallel development? In particular I am intrigued by "piano" and "pianist", since the word "piano" is itself an abbreviation from "pianoforte". And pianoforte itself comes from the Italian word "piano" (quiet) and "forte" (loud) - the original term being applied to the new invention, a harpsichord "con piano e forte" - a harpsichord that could play loudly or softly - something a normal harpsichord cannot do.

One interesting word that might be of relevance is "robotics", since we can track what the date of occurrence of each word in question. The word is from "robot", coined by Capek in 1921. "Robotic" was coined by Asimov in 1950, with no separate date listed for "robotics". Asimov was probably also the first to use "roboticist", which I think sounds better than "robotist", in the same way that I think "ceramicist" sounds better than "ceramist".

Now, this example is flawed, because there is a clear root of "robot". Ceramics comes from the Greek "ceramikos", meaning of or related to "ceramos", which means pottery, so "ceram" does not seem to be the root, and is certainly not considered such in English. I suppose we would need to know how to say "potter" or "ceramicist" in Greek.

Interestingly, unlike ceramic/ceramicist/ceramist "robot" and "robotics" follow what could be considered the nearest thing to a rule about stress in English, which is that the majority of words stress their penultimate or ante-penultimate syllable and often change their stress when they are changed to a variant form to keep to that rule. But please don't give me examples of the thousands that don't ;-)

For example:

SYStem but systemATic; ORient but oriENTal; invESTigate but investiGATion. And ROWbot but roBOTic.

Edited for typo.

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