Talk:repertor

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Latest comment: 5 years ago by LlywelynII in topic Latin etym
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Latin etym[edit]

Apologies if extensive breakdown is looked down on outside of English entries or if there was a formatting mistake somewhere. At the same time, this term does not derive from a -tor suffix but from -or added to the past participle base, which includes a t already. Cf. the linked OED article in the English section. — LlywelynII 15:53, 5 August 2018 (UTC)Reply

I'm not aware of the OED being an especially accurate source on Latin morphology. The agent suffix is -tor, not -or which serves to form abstract nouns. The resemblance with the supine stem is coincidental.

Leaving aside the snideness w/r/t the OED, it's at least a reliable source. It might be that we're parking all the agentive aspects of the suffix -or at -tor for some reason but it'd be nice to see some source to that effect and explanation of why we're doing that. The online sources I'm finding all describe it under -or and (e.g.) tensor doesn't seem on the face of it to have anything to do with a -tor suffix at all, despite the way we're separating things now.

Again, apologies for the makework, but I can't seem to find anything online that backs this up except for circular references here on Wiktionary. — LlywelynII 16:38, 5 August 2018 (UTC)Reply

Fwiw, the only source at -tor (here) describes the agent suffix here, listing -*ter-, -*tor-, -*tel-, and -*tol-, but it's only talking about reconstructed PIE roots and not anything within Latin itself. Elsewhere, it seems to discuss Latin suffixes -itor (with the -i-) and -or (without the -t-). Of course, it's patchy because of the preview limitations, so I certainly might be missing sth. — LlywelynII 16:51, 5 August 2018 (UTC)Reply