Can I say eight-gon, nine-gon and ten-gon instead of octa-, nona-, and deca-gon?
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As a non-native English speaker I struggle with Greek prefixes. Am I allowed to use just normal English numbers in place of them? Is it natural? Or do I have to learn how those Greek prefixes work at the end of the day?
grammar grammaticality numbers mathematics
New contributor
add a comment |
up vote
4
down vote
favorite
As a non-native English speaker I struggle with Greek prefixes. Am I allowed to use just normal English numbers in place of them? Is it natural? Or do I have to learn how those Greek prefixes work at the end of the day?
grammar grammaticality numbers mathematics
New contributor
I've never heard these, but I think I would understand them if I heard them.
– Colin Fine
4 hours ago
@ColinFine up to how many Greek prefixes do you know?
– Happy
4 hours ago
3
You would call it an eight-sided polygon. Not eight-gon. And you could do that in a great many languages not just English. But maybe more to the point, you could also just say octagon in all these languages. So if you just learn that, you actually save yourself work in the end because everyone will understand you from New York to Paris to Berlin to Moscow. And also, those prefixes are incredibly useful for other things and pop up in all kinds of other places. Octopus, octave, October. Decade, decimal, December. You will end up learning all of them anyway. You already have.
– RegDwigнt♦
4 hours ago
1
A corollary of that is that if you do go with eight-gon and ten-gon, people won't take that to mean you're trying to make things easy for yourself. They wiill take that to mean you're trying to be difficult on purpose. Because everyone knows about the decade and the octopus. And everyone can draw the connection.
– RegDwigнt♦
4 hours ago
In the US, at least, you can say pretty much anything you want -- you (probably) won't be shot for it. The terms you suggest would be generally understood, and I think they are quite acceptable coming from someone who clearly has an incomplete command of the language. If, however, you will be talking in an academic environment you probably should take the effort to learn the correct terms. (Personally, I kind of detest the ordinals -- I think they should be "wonth", "tooth", "threeth", "forth", and "fifeth".)
– Hot Licks
4 hours ago
add a comment |
up vote
4
down vote
favorite
up vote
4
down vote
favorite
As a non-native English speaker I struggle with Greek prefixes. Am I allowed to use just normal English numbers in place of them? Is it natural? Or do I have to learn how those Greek prefixes work at the end of the day?
grammar grammaticality numbers mathematics
New contributor
As a non-native English speaker I struggle with Greek prefixes. Am I allowed to use just normal English numbers in place of them? Is it natural? Or do I have to learn how those Greek prefixes work at the end of the day?
grammar grammaticality numbers mathematics
grammar grammaticality numbers mathematics
New contributor
New contributor
New contributor
asked 4 hours ago
Happy
311
311
New contributor
New contributor
I've never heard these, but I think I would understand them if I heard them.
– Colin Fine
4 hours ago
@ColinFine up to how many Greek prefixes do you know?
– Happy
4 hours ago
3
You would call it an eight-sided polygon. Not eight-gon. And you could do that in a great many languages not just English. But maybe more to the point, you could also just say octagon in all these languages. So if you just learn that, you actually save yourself work in the end because everyone will understand you from New York to Paris to Berlin to Moscow. And also, those prefixes are incredibly useful for other things and pop up in all kinds of other places. Octopus, octave, October. Decade, decimal, December. You will end up learning all of them anyway. You already have.
– RegDwigнt♦
4 hours ago
1
A corollary of that is that if you do go with eight-gon and ten-gon, people won't take that to mean you're trying to make things easy for yourself. They wiill take that to mean you're trying to be difficult on purpose. Because everyone knows about the decade and the octopus. And everyone can draw the connection.
– RegDwigнt♦
4 hours ago
In the US, at least, you can say pretty much anything you want -- you (probably) won't be shot for it. The terms you suggest would be generally understood, and I think they are quite acceptable coming from someone who clearly has an incomplete command of the language. If, however, you will be talking in an academic environment you probably should take the effort to learn the correct terms. (Personally, I kind of detest the ordinals -- I think they should be "wonth", "tooth", "threeth", "forth", and "fifeth".)
– Hot Licks
4 hours ago
add a comment |
I've never heard these, but I think I would understand them if I heard them.
– Colin Fine
4 hours ago
@ColinFine up to how many Greek prefixes do you know?
– Happy
4 hours ago
3
You would call it an eight-sided polygon. Not eight-gon. And you could do that in a great many languages not just English. But maybe more to the point, you could also just say octagon in all these languages. So if you just learn that, you actually save yourself work in the end because everyone will understand you from New York to Paris to Berlin to Moscow. And also, those prefixes are incredibly useful for other things and pop up in all kinds of other places. Octopus, octave, October. Decade, decimal, December. You will end up learning all of them anyway. You already have.
– RegDwigнt♦
4 hours ago
1
A corollary of that is that if you do go with eight-gon and ten-gon, people won't take that to mean you're trying to make things easy for yourself. They wiill take that to mean you're trying to be difficult on purpose. Because everyone knows about the decade and the octopus. And everyone can draw the connection.
– RegDwigнt♦
4 hours ago
In the US, at least, you can say pretty much anything you want -- you (probably) won't be shot for it. The terms you suggest would be generally understood, and I think they are quite acceptable coming from someone who clearly has an incomplete command of the language. If, however, you will be talking in an academic environment you probably should take the effort to learn the correct terms. (Personally, I kind of detest the ordinals -- I think they should be "wonth", "tooth", "threeth", "forth", and "fifeth".)
– Hot Licks
4 hours ago
I've never heard these, but I think I would understand them if I heard them.
– Colin Fine
4 hours ago
I've never heard these, but I think I would understand them if I heard them.
– Colin Fine
4 hours ago
@ColinFine up to how many Greek prefixes do you know?
– Happy
4 hours ago
@ColinFine up to how many Greek prefixes do you know?
– Happy
4 hours ago
3
3
You would call it an eight-sided polygon. Not eight-gon. And you could do that in a great many languages not just English. But maybe more to the point, you could also just say octagon in all these languages. So if you just learn that, you actually save yourself work in the end because everyone will understand you from New York to Paris to Berlin to Moscow. And also, those prefixes are incredibly useful for other things and pop up in all kinds of other places. Octopus, octave, October. Decade, decimal, December. You will end up learning all of them anyway. You already have.
– RegDwigнt♦
4 hours ago
You would call it an eight-sided polygon. Not eight-gon. And you could do that in a great many languages not just English. But maybe more to the point, you could also just say octagon in all these languages. So if you just learn that, you actually save yourself work in the end because everyone will understand you from New York to Paris to Berlin to Moscow. And also, those prefixes are incredibly useful for other things and pop up in all kinds of other places. Octopus, octave, October. Decade, decimal, December. You will end up learning all of them anyway. You already have.
– RegDwigнt♦
4 hours ago
1
1
A corollary of that is that if you do go with eight-gon and ten-gon, people won't take that to mean you're trying to make things easy for yourself. They wiill take that to mean you're trying to be difficult on purpose. Because everyone knows about the decade and the octopus. And everyone can draw the connection.
– RegDwigнt♦
4 hours ago
A corollary of that is that if you do go with eight-gon and ten-gon, people won't take that to mean you're trying to make things easy for yourself. They wiill take that to mean you're trying to be difficult on purpose. Because everyone knows about the decade and the octopus. And everyone can draw the connection.
– RegDwigнt♦
4 hours ago
In the US, at least, you can say pretty much anything you want -- you (probably) won't be shot for it. The terms you suggest would be generally understood, and I think they are quite acceptable coming from someone who clearly has an incomplete command of the language. If, however, you will be talking in an academic environment you probably should take the effort to learn the correct terms. (Personally, I kind of detest the ordinals -- I think they should be "wonth", "tooth", "threeth", "forth", and "fifeth".)
– Hot Licks
4 hours ago
In the US, at least, you can say pretty much anything you want -- you (probably) won't be shot for it. The terms you suggest would be generally understood, and I think they are quite acceptable coming from someone who clearly has an incomplete command of the language. If, however, you will be talking in an academic environment you probably should take the effort to learn the correct terms. (Personally, I kind of detest the ordinals -- I think they should be "wonth", "tooth", "threeth", "forth", and "fifeth".)
– Hot Licks
4 hours ago
add a comment |
3 Answers
3
active
oldest
votes
up vote
3
down vote
Mathematicians do use this form for bigger numbers. The Wikipedia article Heptadecagon currently contains the phrase "a regular 51-gon, 85-gon or 255-gon and any regular n-gon with 2h times as many sides. "
And in that context, you may find mathematicians using the form for smaller numbers: in an article about polygons of different sizes, I would not be surprised to meet "5-gon" or "8-gon".
But outside mathematics, I've never heard anybody say "eight-gon" or any of the others.
add a comment |
up vote
2
down vote
Short answer: no.
Longer answer: you will probably be understood, but people will think it's strange. Almost all words in English have roots in other languages. For these words, you have correctly identified Greek as the original language. Curiously, you have taken exception with the prefixes, but not the suffix: -gon, which is also Greek.
As a more interesting case, triangle uses the -angle suffix, which comes from Latin.
( tri- is both a Greek and Latin prefix.)
I wouldn't say "almost all" ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
– Azor Ahai
1 hour ago
add a comment |
up vote
1
down vote
Older Germanic languages had very few nouns and adjectives to describe geometric shapes. English had native words for a circle, trendel and heing, an arch boga, cf. Ger. Bogen, and words for three- and four-cornered, _ þriscíte_ and, variously spelled, feoðerscéte , feðerscíte , fiðerscýte , fyðerscýte.
Square, from Old French esquire, first entered English as a carpenter’s square mid 13th c., a square shape/area in the late 14th c., and finally as a rectangle with equal sides in the 1550s. This would suggest that a carpenter couldn’t use a square to draw the eponymous shape for well over a century.
Triangle was borrowed directly from French in the late 13th c.
The most common names for polygons with 5–8 sides entered English from Greek via Latin in the 1560s. This tells you a great deal about the systematic study of geometry in England as pentagonon and octagonon lost their endings to become what we call them today. You’re basically stuck with them. Such bizarre grecogermanic hybrids like *five-gon do not exist.
Other Germanic languages went through a similar process, but the names of polygons were calqued into native words: Ger. Dreieck, lit. ‘three-corner’, just as Old English, but as nouns, Viereck, Achteck, etc. Cf. Dutch _driehoek, Danish and Norwegian trekant (same meaning, different root), but Swedish triangel.
The Greek and Latin cardinal and ordinal numbers pop up in so many English and international words that it pays to learn them, sextuplets, quad bike, bicycle, tricycle, mononucleosis, and on and on.
I should add that to my ear ‘85-angle’ (by analogy with ‘triangle’ sounds better and makes easier sense.
– Tuffy
1 hour ago
add a comment |
3 Answers
3
active
oldest
votes
3 Answers
3
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
up vote
3
down vote
Mathematicians do use this form for bigger numbers. The Wikipedia article Heptadecagon currently contains the phrase "a regular 51-gon, 85-gon or 255-gon and any regular n-gon with 2h times as many sides. "
And in that context, you may find mathematicians using the form for smaller numbers: in an article about polygons of different sizes, I would not be surprised to meet "5-gon" or "8-gon".
But outside mathematics, I've never heard anybody say "eight-gon" or any of the others.
add a comment |
up vote
3
down vote
Mathematicians do use this form for bigger numbers. The Wikipedia article Heptadecagon currently contains the phrase "a regular 51-gon, 85-gon or 255-gon and any regular n-gon with 2h times as many sides. "
And in that context, you may find mathematicians using the form for smaller numbers: in an article about polygons of different sizes, I would not be surprised to meet "5-gon" or "8-gon".
But outside mathematics, I've never heard anybody say "eight-gon" or any of the others.
add a comment |
up vote
3
down vote
up vote
3
down vote
Mathematicians do use this form for bigger numbers. The Wikipedia article Heptadecagon currently contains the phrase "a regular 51-gon, 85-gon or 255-gon and any regular n-gon with 2h times as many sides. "
And in that context, you may find mathematicians using the form for smaller numbers: in an article about polygons of different sizes, I would not be surprised to meet "5-gon" or "8-gon".
But outside mathematics, I've never heard anybody say "eight-gon" or any of the others.
Mathematicians do use this form for bigger numbers. The Wikipedia article Heptadecagon currently contains the phrase "a regular 51-gon, 85-gon or 255-gon and any regular n-gon with 2h times as many sides. "
And in that context, you may find mathematicians using the form for smaller numbers: in an article about polygons of different sizes, I would not be surprised to meet "5-gon" or "8-gon".
But outside mathematics, I've never heard anybody say "eight-gon" or any of the others.
answered 4 hours ago
Colin Fine
62.5k167157
62.5k167157
add a comment |
add a comment |
up vote
2
down vote
Short answer: no.
Longer answer: you will probably be understood, but people will think it's strange. Almost all words in English have roots in other languages. For these words, you have correctly identified Greek as the original language. Curiously, you have taken exception with the prefixes, but not the suffix: -gon, which is also Greek.
As a more interesting case, triangle uses the -angle suffix, which comes from Latin.
( tri- is both a Greek and Latin prefix.)
I wouldn't say "almost all" ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
– Azor Ahai
1 hour ago
add a comment |
up vote
2
down vote
Short answer: no.
Longer answer: you will probably be understood, but people will think it's strange. Almost all words in English have roots in other languages. For these words, you have correctly identified Greek as the original language. Curiously, you have taken exception with the prefixes, but not the suffix: -gon, which is also Greek.
As a more interesting case, triangle uses the -angle suffix, which comes from Latin.
( tri- is both a Greek and Latin prefix.)
I wouldn't say "almost all" ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
– Azor Ahai
1 hour ago
add a comment |
up vote
2
down vote
up vote
2
down vote
Short answer: no.
Longer answer: you will probably be understood, but people will think it's strange. Almost all words in English have roots in other languages. For these words, you have correctly identified Greek as the original language. Curiously, you have taken exception with the prefixes, but not the suffix: -gon, which is also Greek.
As a more interesting case, triangle uses the -angle suffix, which comes from Latin.
( tri- is both a Greek and Latin prefix.)
Short answer: no.
Longer answer: you will probably be understood, but people will think it's strange. Almost all words in English have roots in other languages. For these words, you have correctly identified Greek as the original language. Curiously, you have taken exception with the prefixes, but not the suffix: -gon, which is also Greek.
As a more interesting case, triangle uses the -angle suffix, which comes from Latin.
( tri- is both a Greek and Latin prefix.)
answered 4 hours ago
Ian MacDonald
2,694815
2,694815
I wouldn't say "almost all" ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
– Azor Ahai
1 hour ago
add a comment |
I wouldn't say "almost all" ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
– Azor Ahai
1 hour ago
I wouldn't say "almost all" ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
– Azor Ahai
1 hour ago
I wouldn't say "almost all" ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
– Azor Ahai
1 hour ago
add a comment |
up vote
1
down vote
Older Germanic languages had very few nouns and adjectives to describe geometric shapes. English had native words for a circle, trendel and heing, an arch boga, cf. Ger. Bogen, and words for three- and four-cornered, _ þriscíte_ and, variously spelled, feoðerscéte , feðerscíte , fiðerscýte , fyðerscýte.
Square, from Old French esquire, first entered English as a carpenter’s square mid 13th c., a square shape/area in the late 14th c., and finally as a rectangle with equal sides in the 1550s. This would suggest that a carpenter couldn’t use a square to draw the eponymous shape for well over a century.
Triangle was borrowed directly from French in the late 13th c.
The most common names for polygons with 5–8 sides entered English from Greek via Latin in the 1560s. This tells you a great deal about the systematic study of geometry in England as pentagonon and octagonon lost their endings to become what we call them today. You’re basically stuck with them. Such bizarre grecogermanic hybrids like *five-gon do not exist.
Other Germanic languages went through a similar process, but the names of polygons were calqued into native words: Ger. Dreieck, lit. ‘three-corner’, just as Old English, but as nouns, Viereck, Achteck, etc. Cf. Dutch _driehoek, Danish and Norwegian trekant (same meaning, different root), but Swedish triangel.
The Greek and Latin cardinal and ordinal numbers pop up in so many English and international words that it pays to learn them, sextuplets, quad bike, bicycle, tricycle, mononucleosis, and on and on.
I should add that to my ear ‘85-angle’ (by analogy with ‘triangle’ sounds better and makes easier sense.
– Tuffy
1 hour ago
add a comment |
up vote
1
down vote
Older Germanic languages had very few nouns and adjectives to describe geometric shapes. English had native words for a circle, trendel and heing, an arch boga, cf. Ger. Bogen, and words for three- and four-cornered, _ þriscíte_ and, variously spelled, feoðerscéte , feðerscíte , fiðerscýte , fyðerscýte.
Square, from Old French esquire, first entered English as a carpenter’s square mid 13th c., a square shape/area in the late 14th c., and finally as a rectangle with equal sides in the 1550s. This would suggest that a carpenter couldn’t use a square to draw the eponymous shape for well over a century.
Triangle was borrowed directly from French in the late 13th c.
The most common names for polygons with 5–8 sides entered English from Greek via Latin in the 1560s. This tells you a great deal about the systematic study of geometry in England as pentagonon and octagonon lost their endings to become what we call them today. You’re basically stuck with them. Such bizarre grecogermanic hybrids like *five-gon do not exist.
Other Germanic languages went through a similar process, but the names of polygons were calqued into native words: Ger. Dreieck, lit. ‘three-corner’, just as Old English, but as nouns, Viereck, Achteck, etc. Cf. Dutch _driehoek, Danish and Norwegian trekant (same meaning, different root), but Swedish triangel.
The Greek and Latin cardinal and ordinal numbers pop up in so many English and international words that it pays to learn them, sextuplets, quad bike, bicycle, tricycle, mononucleosis, and on and on.
I should add that to my ear ‘85-angle’ (by analogy with ‘triangle’ sounds better and makes easier sense.
– Tuffy
1 hour ago
add a comment |
up vote
1
down vote
up vote
1
down vote
Older Germanic languages had very few nouns and adjectives to describe geometric shapes. English had native words for a circle, trendel and heing, an arch boga, cf. Ger. Bogen, and words for three- and four-cornered, _ þriscíte_ and, variously spelled, feoðerscéte , feðerscíte , fiðerscýte , fyðerscýte.
Square, from Old French esquire, first entered English as a carpenter’s square mid 13th c., a square shape/area in the late 14th c., and finally as a rectangle with equal sides in the 1550s. This would suggest that a carpenter couldn’t use a square to draw the eponymous shape for well over a century.
Triangle was borrowed directly from French in the late 13th c.
The most common names for polygons with 5–8 sides entered English from Greek via Latin in the 1560s. This tells you a great deal about the systematic study of geometry in England as pentagonon and octagonon lost their endings to become what we call them today. You’re basically stuck with them. Such bizarre grecogermanic hybrids like *five-gon do not exist.
Other Germanic languages went through a similar process, but the names of polygons were calqued into native words: Ger. Dreieck, lit. ‘three-corner’, just as Old English, but as nouns, Viereck, Achteck, etc. Cf. Dutch _driehoek, Danish and Norwegian trekant (same meaning, different root), but Swedish triangel.
The Greek and Latin cardinal and ordinal numbers pop up in so many English and international words that it pays to learn them, sextuplets, quad bike, bicycle, tricycle, mononucleosis, and on and on.
Older Germanic languages had very few nouns and adjectives to describe geometric shapes. English had native words for a circle, trendel and heing, an arch boga, cf. Ger. Bogen, and words for three- and four-cornered, _ þriscíte_ and, variously spelled, feoðerscéte , feðerscíte , fiðerscýte , fyðerscýte.
Square, from Old French esquire, first entered English as a carpenter’s square mid 13th c., a square shape/area in the late 14th c., and finally as a rectangle with equal sides in the 1550s. This would suggest that a carpenter couldn’t use a square to draw the eponymous shape for well over a century.
Triangle was borrowed directly from French in the late 13th c.
The most common names for polygons with 5–8 sides entered English from Greek via Latin in the 1560s. This tells you a great deal about the systematic study of geometry in England as pentagonon and octagonon lost their endings to become what we call them today. You’re basically stuck with them. Such bizarre grecogermanic hybrids like *five-gon do not exist.
Other Germanic languages went through a similar process, but the names of polygons were calqued into native words: Ger. Dreieck, lit. ‘three-corner’, just as Old English, but as nouns, Viereck, Achteck, etc. Cf. Dutch _driehoek, Danish and Norwegian trekant (same meaning, different root), but Swedish triangel.
The Greek and Latin cardinal and ordinal numbers pop up in so many English and international words that it pays to learn them, sextuplets, quad bike, bicycle, tricycle, mononucleosis, and on and on.
answered 1 hour ago
KarlG
18.7k52753
18.7k52753
I should add that to my ear ‘85-angle’ (by analogy with ‘triangle’ sounds better and makes easier sense.
– Tuffy
1 hour ago
add a comment |
I should add that to my ear ‘85-angle’ (by analogy with ‘triangle’ sounds better and makes easier sense.
– Tuffy
1 hour ago
I should add that to my ear ‘85-angle’ (by analogy with ‘triangle’ sounds better and makes easier sense.
– Tuffy
1 hour ago
I should add that to my ear ‘85-angle’ (by analogy with ‘triangle’ sounds better and makes easier sense.
– Tuffy
1 hour ago
add a comment |
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Happy is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
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I've never heard these, but I think I would understand them if I heard them.
– Colin Fine
4 hours ago
@ColinFine up to how many Greek prefixes do you know?
– Happy
4 hours ago
3
You would call it an eight-sided polygon. Not eight-gon. And you could do that in a great many languages not just English. But maybe more to the point, you could also just say octagon in all these languages. So if you just learn that, you actually save yourself work in the end because everyone will understand you from New York to Paris to Berlin to Moscow. And also, those prefixes are incredibly useful for other things and pop up in all kinds of other places. Octopus, octave, October. Decade, decimal, December. You will end up learning all of them anyway. You already have.
– RegDwigнt♦
4 hours ago
1
A corollary of that is that if you do go with eight-gon and ten-gon, people won't take that to mean you're trying to make things easy for yourself. They wiill take that to mean you're trying to be difficult on purpose. Because everyone knows about the decade and the octopus. And everyone can draw the connection.
– RegDwigнt♦
4 hours ago
In the US, at least, you can say pretty much anything you want -- you (probably) won't be shot for it. The terms you suggest would be generally understood, and I think they are quite acceptable coming from someone who clearly has an incomplete command of the language. If, however, you will be talking in an academic environment you probably should take the effort to learn the correct terms. (Personally, I kind of detest the ordinals -- I think they should be "wonth", "tooth", "threeth", "forth", and "fifeth".)
– Hot Licks
4 hours ago