Re: Five year anniversary?
Gregory Aist (aist+@andrew.cmu.edu)
Wed, 10 Jul 1996 13:24:53 -0400 (EDT)
Excerpts from mail: 10-Jul-96 Re: Five year anniversary? by Chris
Moss@doc.ic.ac.uk
> In all the impressive corpus directed replies that I've seen, a simpler
> etymological point has been forgotten. The English word "anniversary" is
> derived from the Latin "annus" meaning year and "versis", return. Hence
> "year anniversary" is strictly speaking a tautology and not to be
> encouraged. The fact that people use it won't impress people who know that
> origin.
True. However, "X month anniversary" occurs, and anniversary has thus
taken on a less restrictive meaning; perhaps the use of "X year
anniversary" is related.
Would you consider "first anniversary" redundant too? To me
"anniversary" by itself can mean either "one year anniversary" or "X
year anniversary".
Gregory S. Aist aist+@cmu.edu
Graduate student in Computational Linguistics
Office: 150 Baker Hall, 412 268 8148
Mail to: 135 Baker Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA 15213