Disputatio:Televisio

Disputatio

Haec tenet res nullam utilitatem 'viatoris in rete'. Puto, ut principio omni de televisione instrumento scribere debat, tum de televisionibus singularium nationum. Spero quemvis hos errores emendaturum esse, cum ego non sciam. -- Usor:Fabius Bavaricus, 06:27, 26 Maii 2005‎

Gratias ago in te, Iustine, recte fecisti. -- Usor:84.146.185.235, 17:08, 26 Maii 2005

Adiectivum televisificus, -a, -um

"What the hell is 'televisificum'!? It sounds horrible and has no sense.—Ait usor 91.141.1.44.

Tell it to Traupman, who lists:

television broadcast = emissio televisifica

television channel = canalis televisificus

television program = programma televisificum

television screen = quadrum televisificum

television series = series televisifica

"The verb 'facio' (-ficio) is already expressed by the greek prefix 'tele-'.—Ait usor 91.141.1.44.

This will be of interest to etymologists. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:24, 11 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

"changed in 'televisivum" (see: visivus and Italian "televisivo").—Ait usor 91.141.1.44.

Visivus isn't in Traupman; likewise L&S. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:24, 11 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

"Visivus" does appear in Du Cange[1], and televisivus in an article from 1958. I don't get the comment about tele- either, but etymologically televisificus does seem more suited to the instruments that "cause the far-seeing" rather than the programs that are transmitted via the far-seeing, though it might be considered well established in those senses because of Traupman. I'm personally a fan of the non-barbaric telehorasis and the adjective teleopticus.[2] -- Scripsit Lesgles

Personally I am against reinventing the wheel.

About televistrum No doubts that, for instance, the italian word visore would be vistrum in Latin (the stuff for infrared night vision used by the soldiers). As well as the Italian televisore would be televistrum in latin. As in rasum (< rado) + -trum > rastrum, here we would have visum (< video) + -trum > vistrum. The word televistrum is suggested by Tuomo Pekkanen, anyway Televisorium would be possible in theory, but would be perceived as less classical. Moreover, the problem of televisorium is that we could keep the adjective televisorius as "of the televistrum", as gladiatorius means "of the gladiator(es)". I would always follow this pattern:

• nouns: arator, aratrix, aratrum; adj: aratorius -a -um
• nouns: rasor (an improbable "cutter man"), rastrix (an improbable "cutter woman"), rastrum (a "cutter object"); adj: rasorius -a -um (of the cutter stuff – this word brought to the italian rasoio)
• etc.

The rule is: -tus > -tor, -trix, -trum; but: -sus > -sor, -strix, -strum.

About televisivus/televisificus It's just Traupman opinion. Italian language has televisivo, already perceived as a true latinism. Usually you add the suffix -ficus (from facio) only after a noun, as in scientificus (scientiam facere), sēnsificus ("which produces sensation"), salvificus ("which makes someone salvus"), etc. etc. Hence, televisificus would be perceived as "which makes something tele-viewed (televisus, -a, -um)". But we need something more neutral, something which would mean just "of the television". I don't see any reason of not using televisivus. To be precise, televisivus would mean: "of the action of televidere, or tele-watching". As visivus means "visual, of the action of videre, or watching". Just a little addition about televisivus. Remember that "painting" would be an ars visiva (not *visifica). So a TV series would be "ars televisiva" (and not *televisifica). --Grufo (disputatio) 01:12, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

Re "It's just Traupman [sic] opinion." Doesn't the pope count? Vide inscriptionem hic. ;) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 03:42, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

Do you have a classical source for (ars) visiva? Cassell's says 'visual' = oculorum (and has no such adjective as visivus). IacobusAmor (disputatio) 03:47, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

"Doesn't the pope count?" Even worse! The latin of the church is REALLY REALLY horrible. --Grufo (disputatio) 11:23, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

Oh dear! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:00, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

We all are creating neologisms. TV is a neologism in all languages. And for neologism all we need is rules.

• "Related to the eyesight" = visualis, -le (from visus, -ūs: "sight");
• "Related to the view (to what you see, visio)" = visivus (from visum, supine of video);

From a very fast research on google I did not find any classical source for visivus, but late latin yes: in oculo, in quo spiritus est visivus (Marsilius Ficinus): visivus = "that can be viewed" (but a more serious research would not be bad).

For sure you will NEVER find anything like *visificus, --Grufo (disputatio) 11:23, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

This -ificus is a legitimate suffix, as classical Latin has horrificus 'dreadful' ('horror-making'), and salvificus 'saving' ('safety-making')—and therefore vis- + -ificus = 'seeing' ('sight-making') is a parallel construction. (Similarly, though inexactly, maleficus 'nefarious' ('evil-making').) We don't need to make up new words here, as the authority of Pope John XXIII and Traupman are generally held to be adequate for our purposes. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:00, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

Of course -ficus would be legitimate in theory. It's just semantically without sense: horrorificus = "horror-making", salvificus = "salvus-making"… televisificus = "televisus-making"! See my answer below --Grufo (disputatio) 12:17, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

unless you want to create a new word that means "which produces visivas res" (for which, as you can see, the adjective visivus would be anyway needed). --Grufo (disputatio) 11:23, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

The neologism visivus is not needed, as classical Latin has given us oculorum ; however, for those who want to translate an adjective by an adjective, late Latin does offer visualis and its relatives visualia and visualiter. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 11:37, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

I told you, visualis and visivus are not the same thing. Do you see the "u" in visualis? It comes from the u of the 4th declension, from the name visus, -ūs (the eyesight, the perceptive sense), so visualis does not come directly from video. The path of visualis is video > visus, -ūs > visualis. Instead, visivus comes directly from video (video > visivus, through the stem of the supine, of course). If you want to use an adjective related to the eyesight (the sense, the ability of seeing), use visualis; if you want to use an adjective related to the view (what can be viewed, or the verb), use visivus instead. It's simple. But the important thing is to understand that they are not the same thing. Other examples:

• actualis (< actus, -ūs), "related to the actus"; but activus (< ago, -ere), "related the action of agere"
• effectualis (< effectus, -ūs), "related to the effectus"; but effectivus (< efficio, -ere), "related the action of efficere"
• etc. etc.

Going back to this discussion, if you had the magical sense of tele-viewing (i.e., the possibility of viewing from far), your sense would be called *televisus, -ūs in latin. And the adjective related to that magical sense of yours would be *televisualis. We would say that you have a televisualis sensus. But if we are talking just about televisio (our television), the basic adjective would be televisivus.

Regarding the horrible *televisificus, instead, what matters most, as I am still repeating, is that *televisificus would mean "which makes something tele-viewed" (televisus, -a, -um + facio = *televisificus), as salvificus means "which makes someone salvus". But definitely would never mean just "of the televisio" --Grufo (disputatio) 13:47, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

You raise some good points, but a few things:

1. I'm not sure any of this can really be called "reinventing the wheel." We do have a rule here about not making up neologisms, but luckily all of the proposed words here seem to be in one published source or another.
2. This Latinitas issue may be the first attempt to deal with television. Unfortunately, I can't see all of it but if we look at the second snippet, it seems to say:

• Televisione (...): televisio, minus ?apte: telehorama, vel, ut hodie Graeci dicunt, telehorasis p. 91.
• Televisivo (...): televisificus, p. 91.
• Sala per televisione (...): televisorium, p. 91

If anyone has access to the whole of page 91, speak up! Interesting choice for televisorium, but I think we would rarely need a word for "TV room".

4.  Iustinus has argued that the suffix -trum is not really productive in classical Latin, but I'm ambivalent about that.

5.  My slight preference for telehorasis and teleopticus is simply due to the ancients' general avoidance of hybrid Greek-Latin words, but it's true that they aren't very recognizable except to modern Greeks. Lesgles (disputatio) 16:49, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

Televistrum Of course -or and -rix were more productive than -rum (and -or more productive than -rix, since women were less important than men): how many jobs were made by humans and how many by machines? But when an instrument took the name from the action it was able to do, the rule was to form it with -rum. The suffix -orius (-oria, -orium) was used for the adjective "regarding the X-or/X-rix/X-rum" (gladiatorius = regarding the gladiator, amatorius = regarding the amator/amatrix, etc. etc.). The suffixes -or, -rix and -rum are the normal rule for the so called agent nouns. It is also true that you can find some instruments with the suffix -orium (in our case it would be televisorium). But televisorium would be perceived as a cristallized short way for saying instrumentum televisorium. This is because the suffix -orius (-oria, -orium) is just for forming adjectives: afterwards it could cristallize and lose its noun. I just think that if we have to find the right neologisms (because, whatever you choose, they are neologisms) it's crazy to start from the exception (i.e., to imagine a hypothetical instrumentum televisorium and immediately decide to cut out the noun instrumentum and keep just the substantivized adjective televisorium) rather than the rule.

Televisificus This adjective should just be forgotten. Yes, it has been proposed by some scholars: but it's wrong (and terribly ugly). Cicero would faint. Let's not reinvent the wheel. Romance languages have already televisivus, which language has the horrible and semantically-wrong televisificus?!? Moreover, the adjective visivus is quite normal in the late latin used in philosophy, *visificus would be instead a complete neologism with also a doubtful meaning. --Grufo (disputatio) 17:54, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

I don't like "televisificus" at all and have (on the very few occasions on which I've written about television) preferred "televisualis". I might indeed have gone with "televisivus" if it had occurred to me.

OK, our standard has been "televisificus". But thanks to Lesgles far above, we do now have a source for "televisivus". If it were not so, this discussion wouldn't go far (I think) because we don't neologize ourselves if some reliable author has done it for us. I agree with Grufo that "televisificus" contains an unnecessary element: the crucial thing about the channels and programmes is that they are "visible from afar", a fact that "televisivus" expresses. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:39, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, televisivus does in at least one modern text, The Chronicle of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Province (1958), voll. 12-13, p. 198, discussing whether TV's should be allowed in a monastery. In case the snippet doesn't work outside of the US, here it is:

Superiores locales tantummodo in casibus singularibus, ubi scilicet agatur de aliqua transmissione indolis religiosae vel culturalis videnda, permittere possunt per modum actus ut apparatus televisivus in conventu admittantur.

And Grufo, televisificus does appear in at least two texts of late antiquity or the early Middle Ages:

Lewis & Short

vīsĭfĭcus, a, um, adj. video- facio,

I causing to see, conferring sight (late Lat.), Theod. Prisc. 4, 2 fin.

Du Cange

VISIFICUS, Ad videndi sensum pertinens. Alex. Iatrosoph. MS. lib. 1. Passion. cap. 94 :

Adhuc autem et senioribus ætate defectum Visifici spiritus reparant et renovationem faciunt visui.

Vide infra Visivus.

To put everything out on the table, here's what Du Cange says under "visivus":

VISIVUS, Ital. Visivo, Ad facultatem videndi pertinens. Vita S. Rosæ tom. 2. Sept. pag. 437. col. 2 :

Erat quædam virgo nomine Delicata, quæ ab ipsa sua nativitate caruerat virtute Visiva.

Vide supra Visificus.

I also agree that televisificus isn't really necessary and am willing to accept televisivus. Lesgles (disputatio) 18:57, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

Plura indicia

¶ Item: A Usenet citation leads to Gualterus Redmon's lexicon, which offers:

television n : televisio, telehOrasis is f

television a : televisIficus

TV movie : pellicula televisifica

TV report : relatio televisifica

TV set : televisorium, instrumentum televisificum

TV soap : fabula televisifica

TV series : series televisifica

TV viewer : spectator (televisificus), spectatrix

watch television : televisorium specto are

Of that lexicon (otherwise unexplained), one Usenet commenter wrote: "I quite like it. It's compiled for Latin prose composition, as an English to Latin dictionary; covering good classical modes of expression and lots of neologisms. It's probably based on the notes of a conscientious teacher or student of Latin; and then worked on to give it completeness." IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:26, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

¶ Item: Flori Latinitas Recens habet: televisifìcus trames = "It. canale televisivo, An. television station." IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:40, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

In the era of Internet the copy-and-paste goes fast also for wrong things. I repeat, televisificus (a non-sense neologism) should just be forgotten. --Grufo (disputatio) 22:52, 12 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

All these are necessarily neologisms on somebody's part: television is a new thing. I wouldn't describe televisificus as nonsense, but unnecessarily complicated for most contexts. To describe an antenna or a broadcasting company, which "make things visible from afar", televisificus could still be the mot juste. We are writing a rich language. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 08:58, 13 Iulii 2015 (UTC)

Separate articles

Surely Television (a process or medium) and Television set (an object) should be separate articles? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 16:28, 15 Iulii 2016 (UTC)

They certainly could be, but as it was televistrum was an old non-stipula that simply repeated the information found here. If you'd like to revert and enlarge the article about the device, go ahead! Lesgles (disputatio) 17:08, 15 Iulii 2016 (UTC)