Talk:affect

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affect

# {{colloquial|psychology}} A strong [[emotional]] experience. ''See [[#Usage notes|usage notes]] below.''

The dictionaries I use (MW3rdIntl & APA Dictionary of Psychology (2006)) don't report this meaning of "strong" experience. Where is it used this way?

1. (colloquial, psychology) A strong emotional experience.

You might search Victorian-age literature for examples on Wikisource. It sounds like a Victorian usage to me. --EncycloPetey 03:30, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Victorian, psychology, and colloquial seem to make an empty set. I thought she was dead by the time psychological words became colloguial. DCDuring 16:50, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Section title changed from “Affect noun 3rd sense” to “[[affect]]” to repair the RfV tag link. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 08:25, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Arranged by etymology?

Why is this arranged by etymology? Surely it would make more sense to arrange it by meaning? --134.148.4.14 01:41, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Arranging the senses chronologically by etymology not only conveys the term's history, but also gives us an objective method of ordering senses (and as a global, descriptive and highly current dictionary, objective methods are essential). When you say "arrange it by meaning", whose preferred meaning would come first? (And why?)--Tyranny Sue 02:45, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Simpler example?

Take this or leave it: but wouldn't the affect/effect point be much easier to follow with a simpler example? Instead of:

new governing coalitions during these realigning periods have effected major changes in governmental institutions

...maybe some thing more like:

the new policies have effected major changes in government.

...which would (if I understand it correctly???) enable the same point to be made. 79.123.57.130 15:04, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. The original sentence had way too much cruft. Since noone has commented in four years, I've gone ahead and made the change. --121.72.217.79 04:17, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Why three etymologies?

I don't understand the difference between the Etymology 1 section and the Etymology 2 section. Their meanings seem to overlap, the pronunciations are identical, and the etymologies themselves are more or less the same. Why are they listed as distinct? Should they be merged? --121.72.217.79 04:10, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

The difference is subtle, but it's definitely real. There are some senses that are hard to place with one or the other, but the core of Etymology 1 has to do with having an effect on something (or in the archaic senses, the other way around), while the core or Etymology 2 is trying to be or pretending to be something. There were also some senses that seem to have ended up under Etymology 1 by mistake, which I moved.

As for the etymologies, they may start from the same Latin verb, but they get to English by different routes: Etymology 1 went by way of the past participle of the original verb, which became a noun, which was then used to form a verb. Etymology 2 went by way of a frequentative verb derived from the original verb, which stayed a verb all the way into English. Etymology 1 and Etymology 3 are actually closer to each other than either is to Etymology 2, because they both include the past participle as a noun, though Etymology 1 made a verb out of it on its way through Middle French and Middle English, while Etymology 3 borrowed it directly into Middle English from Latin itself. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:10, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Missing obsolete noun sense?

• Tobias Whitaker, The Blood of the Grape

  whether or not wine may be granted, in such doloriferous affects in the joints

Equinox ◑ 02:17, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree this is a usage not well documented here. I also wonder about the use of "affect" to describe the emotional content of a word or the displaying of emotions by a person, usually in the negative, "The patient displayed no affect." Since this meaning in my dialect has a different pronunciation / ˈɑː.fɛkt / should they be separated some how ?Bcent1234 (talk) 14:50, 13 September 2016 (UTC)