Re: Prefixes (was Re: Gravity and pi)

[Brian McInnes <bmcinnes@PNC.COM.AU>]

----------
 paul o johnson wrote
 On Wed, 17 Nov
1998,.............................................................
> Oh man, Dr. Don, you have made my day. I have wondered for years about
> that crazy spelling of spatial, but it never occurred to me to look it
> up in my Funk & Wagnals. Damn if you ain't right. My Random House
> College dictionary says "also spacial" under spatial and my Webster's
> Third Unabridged has it right up front: "spatial or spacial". And they
> even give it its own listing: "spacial  var of spatial".
>
> And my MS Word spell checker isn't any better than your Word Perfect.
> When I fed it spacial it wanted to change it to special or spatial.
>
> My several word and style references don't list either one. I guess it's
> a word only a physicist could love.
>
> Power to the Wordsmiths.
> >



The derivation of spatial is directly from the Latin spatium (space). Since
so many of our words have their origin in Latin, it really isn't just a
"word only a physicist could love".
Brian McInnes