How many words in English end in "shion" do you think? Roughly? (And no cheating with crossword programs or suchlike, you've got to guess.)

Only one ===> Cushion.

Well there's fashion, of course, and...

That'll have to do for starters.

You mean spelling -shion, right? Not just the sound, which is replicated by most of the "-tion" words. (Not all of them: consider "cation," the positively charged not-quite-a-molecule, as a counterexample.)

1. Vision

2. Fusion

3. Confusion

Ogden Nash could bend lots of words to fit that spelling, I'm sure!

Personally, I'm having trouble beyond fashion and cushion.

Ros

I'd say there's just the two words: fashion and cushion. Unless you count a compound word like refashion.

I can't think of anymore than fashion and cushion.

May I go and cheat now?



Tadpole

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Originally posted by Tadpole:
I can't think of anymore than fashion and cushion.

May I go and cheat now?



Tadpole

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You may. There are only those two, which I find really surprising. I was told that in 1970 by a codebreaker at the "secret listening post", GCHQ, in Cheltenham (where I grew up).

He was fascinating, actually. (Dead now, but he'd have been a great asset to this board.) You know those children's puzzles where you slide a number of tiles up, down or sideways in a flat frame so as to get them into some specific order? He could look at one of those without touching it, say something like "15 moves" and then slide them into order in exactly that number of moves. Spooky to watch.

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Originally posted by Morgan:
1. Vision

2. Fusion

3. Confusion

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No, -sHion. Plenty of soundalikes, but only two spelt that way, as I say. No idea why.

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Originally posted by haberdasher:
Well there's fashion, of course, and...

That'll have to do for starters.

You mean spelling -shion, right? Not just the sound, which is replicated by most of the "-tion" words. (Not all of them: consider "cation," the positively charged not-quite-a-molecule, as a counterexample.)

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and most of the -sion words, of course. And why does "train" start with a "ch" sound? (It does, you know, until you think about it and pronounce it slowly!)

Was a cation originally a cat-ion, I wonder? Maybe not, as presumably a cathode was never a cat-hode.

"Cation" is definitely "cat-ion", the analog of anion (that's "AN-eye-on," not "onion-the-vegetable"). Corresponding, as you note, are cathode and anode. I have no idea why the "h" was dropped from the ion. [irrelevancy alert: or why the H it was dropped]. Is anyone able to expound on the origin of the prefixes cath- and an- ? Any relation to cath-edral, for example?

[This message was edited by haberdasher on Fri May 16th, 2003 at 14:10.]

Having just looked it up, anodos and kathodos are the roots, meaning up and down respectively. Presumably it was an arbitrary choice when they were named, which one was which.

Cation appears to come from a different root, so there probably never was a cathion. Besides, cat ion sounds silly enough, cath ion sounds even worse!

Ros

PS - I've been using these words for years and never knew where they came from before!

Now that you remind me of the up-and-down part of the roots I can develop my own question a little. "Catabolism" is the metabolic process of breaking down tissues in the body, and anabolism is building them up -- ever hear of people taking "anabolic steroids" to build up their muscles? And a "catastrophe" is destruction on a grand scale. (Also what my feline pet did to the rug on my steps.)

Still no relevance to cathedral, though. "-hedral" does refer to the faces of a solid object (polyhedron, tetrahedron, etc.) Any headway there?

cathedral: - 1587, "church of a bishop," from phrase cathedral church (1297), translating L.L. ecclesia cathedralis "church of a bishop's seat," from Gk. kathedra "seat, bench," from kata "down" + hedra "a seat."

[P.S. The underlined word is a link.]

Good site, Shufitz, unknown to me, thank you. Bookmarked!

Sorry about that paul...call it a brain fart or a senior moment! I didn't see the "h" in there!

Thanks, Paul, but the credit goes to wordnerd.

I finally figured out why "shion" has been tickling my brain so.

It's another childhood memory. It should be pronounced "shy-on", and it comes from a Spoonerized story, one of Aysop's Feebles called "The Mion and the Louse," and toward the end there is the phrase "...the lierce fig bion was nangled up in a tet...so, gnawing the topes with his reeth, [the mee wouse] soon freed the shion from his lackles..."

Seriously. It can be found in Twisted Tales, by Lemuel Stoopnagel. You could look it up !

[Edit: And here is where you look: http://www.stoneandscott.com/humor.html]

catastrophe
___________________________________________

Doesn't the cata herein mean "against" rather than "down"? It sounds as if the Greek chorus has gone in the wrong direction, and the play has fallen apart.

(or, pardon, my ignorance is showing)


In Greek theater there is strophe, antistrophe, apostrophe and a few more kinds, I think. I can never keep them straight.

...another of those sets of terms I've learned five times and forgotten six.

(Why do I have the feeling that -trophy and -strophe are completely different?)

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(Why do I have the feeling that -trophy and -strophe are completely different?)

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That feeling probably comes from your knowledtge of English and its ancestors, where one letter more or less makes a big difference.

lab ........ slab
tab ....... stab
truck .... struck

(actually I would guess the more important difference is with the -e as opposed to the -y)

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Originally posted by haberdasher:
tropisms grow on you

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I'm not sure what you mean by tropisms. The only tropisms I know of are plant movements in response to external stimuli. Somehow, I don't think that's what you had in mind.

Tinman

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Originally posted by pauld:
And why does "train" start with a "ch" sound?

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Because it's a choo-choo!

Tinman

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Originally posted by pauld:

quote:

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Originally posted by Tadpole:
I can't think of anymore than fashion and cushion.

May I go and cheat now?



Tadpole

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You may. There are only those two, which I find really surprising. I was told that in 1970 by a codebreaker at the "secret listening post", GCHQ, in Cheltenham (where I grew up).

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Since we're now allowed to cheat, I looked in AskOxford and found three more: hushion, fushion and parishion. These are all Scottish words, and the last one is obsolete.

The OED Online lists hushion and parishion, but not fushion. It does, however list fushionless, which is the same as foisonless, defined as "Wanting substance, strength, or ‘sap’; weak, ineffective, both in a material and immaterial sense. Of grass: Wanting in succulence or nourishing properties". Foison is "Inherent vigour or vitality; power, strength, capacity".

Tinman

from Bartleby's:

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001.

tropism

involuntary response of an organism, or part of an organism, involving orientation toward (positive tropism) or away from (negative tropism) one or more external stimuli. The term tropism is usually applied to growth and turgor movements in plants; an involuntary orientation of a microorganism toward or away from an external stimulus is commonly called a taxic movement, or taxis


So I guess my use of "tropism" alluded more to the growth than to turning, and is inaccurate in that regard. But the turning in plants is accomplished by the preferential growth of cells on one or the other side of a stalk, resulting in the turning of whatever's above it toward or away from the stimulus depending on which side grows.