Talk:-ia

RFV-sense archive
archive on the RFV page here — Beobach 06:53, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

-ia
Rfv-sense: (English) "Used in forming analogous pluralia tantum, such as paraphernalia and Mammalia."
 * Two problems with this: (1) Mammalia is a Translingual word from Latin, not an English-original word, (2) the suffix added in paraphernalia seems to be -alia. Are there actually any English words formed from this putative English suffix, that do not fit one of the other two senses given? --EncycloPetey 07:25, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Difficult. Perhaps automobilia (car collectibles), imponderabilia (inexplicable things)? If the suffix here is -lia or -ilia then perhaps we need another entry for that. Equinox 19:02, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Administrativia is common, I think. I've always understood it to be uncountable rather than plurale, but maybe I'm wrong.—msh210 ℠  20:48, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I would consider it plural, like news: (which I think ought to have the entry changed to say as such). These examples, if they meet CFI, all sound like they justify the suffix, and would serve as good replacement examples in the entry. --EncycloPetey 05:22, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I notice that many of these entries would actually fall under -bilia. I can only explain this as a reference to memorabilia. 70.171.228.228 21:36, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the examples above, all but one (1) were borrowed whole from Latin, (2) added -alia, or (3) added -bilia, as the anonymous user says. Administrativia, in turn, could easily just be a variation of administrivia (which it indeed redirects to), which is "administrative" + "trivia", not + "-ia". That said, militaria is a convincing example, and other dictionaries support our analysis of it as "militar(y)" + "-ia". There's also realia, and deletia, words which a look through Google Books suggests meet CFI, if only barely in the case of the latter (with a few typewriter-era quotations and a few computer-era quotations). If those three nouns are the equivalent of the three quotations that would verify a word, they verify the suffix. RFV-passed? — Beobach972 04:48, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * On the other hand, some dictionaries say realia was borrowed whole from Latin... — Beobach972 04:53, 13 November 2010 (UTC)


 * After looking through the first hundred in a thousand-word list of words that end in -ia, I found no further examples of this suffix being used in the disputed way. Taking into account that even with a few more unequivocal examples to complete deletia and militaria it would still be rare, I simply expanded the first sense ('used to form names of things') and removed the independent sense. Striking (as RFV-failed without prejudice). — Beobach972 19:14, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Latin
Etymology 1 doesn't differentiate between native unstressed -ia (originally same thing as Etymology 2, IE feminine singular in -ā is derived from neuter plural, and most old abstract nominals from concrete ones), to which class all current examples belong, and stressed ía borrowed from Greek, the source of -ie in French. 89.64.70.35 20:45, 14 October 2023 (UTC)