Money For Nothing
Here's a cautionary little fable about what happens where there are two words in English that look very much alike, and one of them seems to mean what you think it means but actually means something very different.
From an earlier version of a Boingboing story about how they got to name a Virgin Airlines airplane:
BTW, we did not receive money or any other form of renumeration for this, nor did they receive any cash or promises of manually administered happy endings from us.
It's been emended. Now it reads:
BTW, we did not receive money or any other form of compensation for this, nor did they receive any cash or promises of manually administered happy endings from us.
Did you spot the difference?
They could have simply changed the word in question to "remuneration", which is entirely correct. I don't know why they thought "compensation" might be better. Embarrassment, I guess.
"Renumeration" is a word. To numerate is to count, so to renumerate is to re-count. But "remunerate" is something else entirely: it means "to pay" or "to give a reward". The "re-" at the beginning is confusing, because it looks as if ought to be the same "re-" at the beginning of "renumerate" (which would make "remunerate" mean "to give money back"), but it isn't: it's a simple intensifier, one which is used in a great many Latin-derived words such as "refine", which doesn't mean "to make fine again" but "to make finer".
A great many people use "renumerate" where they mean "remunerate", both in speech and in writing. It's always wrong.
"Remunerate" comes from Latin "munus", which derived from the Indo-European root "mei-" and had a cluster of meanings, because the root was a very general one that created a vast number of words related to change and motion. "Munus" meant "duty" (its original meaning) and then "gift" and, at a slight metaphorical distance, "exchange". This is why it led to such a big batch of words in English. The "duty" sense led to such words as "municipal" and "immune" (not subject to the duties of public office). The "gift" sense gave us "remuneration" and "munificent", which is to say generous. The "exchange" sense, bolstered by the prefix "com-", "with", gives us such words as "commune", "community", and "communicate".
From an earlier version of a Boingboing story about how they got to name a Virgin Airlines airplane:
BTW, we did not receive money or any other form of renumeration for this, nor did they receive any cash or promises of manually administered happy endings from us.
It's been emended. Now it reads:
BTW, we did not receive money or any other form of compensation for this, nor did they receive any cash or promises of manually administered happy endings from us.
Did you spot the difference?
They could have simply changed the word in question to "remuneration", which is entirely correct. I don't know why they thought "compensation" might be better. Embarrassment, I guess.
"Renumeration" is a word. To numerate is to count, so to renumerate is to re-count. But "remunerate" is something else entirely: it means "to pay" or "to give a reward". The "re-" at the beginning is confusing, because it looks as if ought to be the same "re-" at the beginning of "renumerate" (which would make "remunerate" mean "to give money back"), but it isn't: it's a simple intensifier, one which is used in a great many Latin-derived words such as "refine", which doesn't mean "to make fine again" but "to make finer".
A great many people use "renumerate" where they mean "remunerate", both in speech and in writing. It's always wrong.
"Remunerate" comes from Latin "munus", which derived from the Indo-European root "mei-" and had a cluster of meanings, because the root was a very general one that created a vast number of words related to change and motion. "Munus" meant "duty" (its original meaning) and then "gift" and, at a slight metaphorical distance, "exchange". This is why it led to such a big batch of words in English. The "duty" sense led to such words as "municipal" and "immune" (not subject to the duties of public office). The "gift" sense gave us "remuneration" and "munificent", which is to say generous. The "exchange" sense, bolstered by the prefix "com-", "with", gives us such words as "commune", "community", and "communicate".
posted by pyramus | 7:18 PM
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