Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. They are antonymic to suffixes -phob-.
Phil- (Philo-) may also be used as a prefix with a similar meaning.
I think I’ve told you about my love of etymology.
For me, there’s nothing as divine as true understanding — and the first barrier to understanding is not actually understanding the words.
Now, admittedly, you could go through life without ever knowing the roots of words. Most people do. But the added richness of knowing derivations, the additional nuance and flavour… well, to me it’s unrivalled!
Call me a nerd, but I just LOVE that little lip-formed ‘o’ that people make when I tell them the derivation of a word. Sometimes it’s a vapid ‘o’ of not-quite-understanding, but sometimes it’s of the omg-my-world-view-has-just-totally-changed variety.
To the case in point: philia, philos, phil — Greek (φίλος) for ‘beloved’ or ‘dear’. Now, you certainly know the suffix form — paedophile, cinephilia, Anglophilic. But the prefix form… ahhh!
Philosophy! A love of wisdom.
Philadelphia! Brotherly love.
Philanthropy! Love of fellow humans.
Philanderer! Loving or fond of men (but probably after someone called Philander).
But the word I was actually looking up, which led me to ‘phil’, is Philharmonic. It’s just one of those words that you see around — but I bet you didn’t know what it means. Until now! It literally means ‘the beloved sound’. Very simple, yet I bet most orchestras don’t even know why they’re called ‘philharmonic’.
There, done. That wasn’t too boring, was it?
Alexia
Jun 22, 2010
Good you established the true understanding of the first part of the word. Do your reading for the second part too. ‘philharmonic’: second part comes from harmony. a harmony of sounds. Hence the orchestras are called like that.
jo
Jun 22, 2010
That wasn’t boring at all, very interesting!
Eleni
Jun 22, 2010
Funnily enough, I remember the first word that really clued me in to the whole “phil” deal: hydrophilic, which I came across when doing a science project on soap in seventh grade (a soap molecule has a hydrophobic half to attract oils and grease, plus a hydrophilic half so it can all get washed away with the water). Though I never did think about the word philharmonic before. Makes sense!
It might have been nice to take Latin in high school so I could know more Latin roots, but one can pick up quite a lot of roots (Latin, Greek, etc.) if one bothers to try.
sebastian
Jun 22, 2010
I know what ‘harmony’ means, Alexia…
Soap has always blown my mind, Eleni! Amazing that you can create such an amazing product from just a bit of fat and some stearic acid!
They’ve been making it for a LONG time too. I wonder how you stumble across the original recipe for soap, hmm… (I feel some more research coming on…)
I did Latin for a few years at school. I can understand it fairly well when it’s written down, but I can’t speak it, or decipher the spoken word. Combined with a few years of French and a bit of German, I can guess at the derivations of almost every English word!
Just not the Greek stuff…
Eleni
Jun 23, 2010
I had a history teacher in high school (his name was pronounced Dr. Jekyll, though it wasn’t spelled that way) who was fond of etymologies (he was also the Latin teacher, and knew Greek as well). One of his favorite etymologies that I remember him telling us about was “porcelain.” Fascinating stuff.
Eleni
Jun 23, 2010
Oh yeah, and soap is amazing. In fourth grade, we went on this field trip that was basically like going to camp for three days, and one of the days we got to choose which of ten (educational) activities we wanted to do. I was in the last group to choose, so I was forced into the boring sounding soap class. But they had some really cool demonstrations for us, and we got to play with bubbles (always a win), and of course I’ve always liked science so I had a great time. It made a pretty cool project once I was in seventh grade and could actually understand some of the chemistry behind it.
Soap may be fascinating, but watching Fight Club kind of put me off of soap-making. Ew.
MentalSarcasm
Jun 23, 2010
“Philanderer! Loving or fond of men (but probably after someone called Philander).”
Probably came from “Philandros”. Philo = love (obviously), andros = man.
Love ancient Greek.
sebastian
Jun 24, 2010
I said that it means ‘love of man’…! Andros is one of the Greek roots that I know
The bit I don’t get: does it mean ‘loving men’, or does it mean ‘the love of man’, where ‘man’ is generic ‘humankind’?
That’s why Philander as a name seems more likely… because you wouldn’t call ‘having an affair with women’ the same as ‘loving men’…
Eleni — apparently Jekyll is actually pronounced ‘Jeekl’, in Scottish (which is where he came from). There’s a good BBC drama from a few years ago called ‘Jekyll’ — worth watching!