Talk:phytotelmatum

RFV discussion: March–April 2013
A user on the feedback identifying himself as a retired biology professor [ has asserted] this term is wrong and only phytotelma is correct. Boogle Gooks has only 4 hits, all of them in the species name Smittium phytotelmatum. —Angr 12:37, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
 * But there are very many hits for the the more common plural phytotelmata:. SemperBlotto (talk) 12:43, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
 * But that is also the plural of phytotelma, which the retired biology professor (not to mention Wikipedia) identifies as the correct word. It's one of those Greek words in -ma whose plural is in -mata. To the extent phytotelmatum exists at all, it's probably a back-formation from the plural phytotelmata. —Angr 13:33, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Absolutely. The ph and the y are dead giveaways that this is from Greek, and Greek -ma / -mata is a very common nominalizing suffix. In Latin, one would have to assume a neuter participle of a non-existent verb *telmō, since, according to Lewis & Short on Perseus, there are no lemmas ending in -matum. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:19, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I think this (phytotelmatum) was an error from the start. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:18, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Phytotelmatum is wrong and should be removed. word phytotelma (plural phytotelmata)


 * Deleted. The singular of phytotelmata is phytotelma. —Angr 19:47, 19 April 2013 (UTC)