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Thursday, April 28, 2011

The Royal Nupt*als

Even Wordlady is hopping aboard the Royal Wedding bandwagon. My homage to Prince William and Kate (with whom I share a pet name) is to warn you against misspelling and mispronouncing "nuptial". Yes you read that right, it's nuptial, not nuptual. It comes from the Latin word nuptiae (wedding). As happened with nuclear, people have been perhaps influenced by words with similar, but not exactly the same, endings (as in "conceptual" and "voluptuous"). Although there are many fairly common words in English ending in -tial (circumstantial, preferential, confidential, credential, partial, etc.), with which no one has any problems, "nuptial" is the only one ending in -ptial, other than the word "preceptial", which I bet you don't use a lot. So what we would like to wish the happy couple is all the best on the occasion of their "NUPsh'lls".
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3 comments:

  1. E.T.April 30, 2011 at 5:31 AM

    Hello,

    Two questions:

    1. Has "nuptiae" anything to do with "night" ?

    2. The "-tial" suffix is no surprise, but where does the "p" come from ?

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. E.T.May 1, 2011 at 7:59 PM

    I should have explained that a linguist friend had once asked me what that process might have been, that turned "k"-sounds (or "qu"-sounds into "p"s in Romanian. One such example occurs with the word for "night".

    That's why I asked if "nuptial" was related to "night" (plausible, perhaps), for it would show a similar phenomenon outside Romanian.

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Felicity PickupMay 9, 2011 at 11:26 AM

    Wow! I didn't know that! Guess it's time to stop priding myself on my spelling.

    ReplyDelete

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About Me

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Canada's Word Lady, Katherine Barber is an expert on the English language and a frequent guest on radio and television. She was Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. Her witty and informative talks on the stories behind our words are very popular. Contact her at wordlady.barber@gmail.com to book her for speaking engagements; she can tailor her talks to almost any subject. She is also available as an expert witness for lawsuits.