this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
56 points (73.0% liked)
Showerthoughts
29793 readers
898 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics
- 3.1) NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
- 3.2) Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
- 3.3) Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Actually, it is.
It derives from Latin infans where "in-" is a negation prefix and "fans" is the present participle form of "for", which translates to "to speak".
So an infant is a non-speaker (too small to speak).
But my opener was of course a joke, where I purpously misunderstood what "fant" is derived of, by claiming that "fant" must be the opposite of a child, thus an adult.
There are tons of Latin words in the English language and many of them only survived in English in their compounded form (e.g. "in-fant", where no other version of the actual verb in there survived, except the negated form).
Often the parts of these Latin root words have no meaning at all anymore in English, so that people don't notice that they are actually using compound words and also the original meaning of the word is forgotten.
Not a lot of people would associate "infant" with "hearing".