Paedophilia vs. pedophilia

Guest · **Posted:** Sat Jan 11, 2003 2:23 pm

RICHMOND, England -- Rock legend Pete Townshend has issued a public statement denying being a paedophile after his name was linked with a police Internet porn inquiry. But The Who guitarist and song-writer did admit studying child pornography for research into a campaign against it. He told reporters on Saturday that he told police what he was doing. *** This was posted on cnn.com this morning (no source given, such as Reuters or AP). Should we come across this in our wire travels today and even decide to use it (though right now Maurice Gibb's near-fatal condition supercedes Pete's purported porn predilections in my Nation/World news queue), we should be careful to remove such Anglicizations such as "paedophilia." No American dictionary I could find has a listing under that spelling, and it appears to be a purely British construction that would only confuse American readers, who are sadly, more used to the spelling "pedophilia."We're dealing with this at my paper quite a bit lately with our newest reporter, who's American-born but Canadian-reared ... he seems unable to remove such spellings as "centre" or "colour," as well as purely Canadian constructs such as "Grade 12" instead of the more American "twelfth grade" from his raw copy, and so we're kept busy on the copy desk cleaning the Canuck from his prose ....

SusanV · **Posted:** Sat Jan 11, 2003 3:51 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Jim Thomsen:
We're dealing with this at my paper quite a bit lately with our newest reporter, who's American-born but Canadian-reared ... he seems unable to remove such spellings as "centre" or "colour," as well as purely Canadian constructs such as "Grade 12" instead of the more American "twelfth grade" from his raw copy, and so we're kept busy on the copy desk cleaning the Canuck from his prose ....<hr></blockquote>
That's what we like to call job security! ;) Regarding paed/pedophilia, I checked a 1980 Oxford American Dictionary. It has neither (which I guess says something about our times). When I'm in the office next week, I'll do a little digging--we have some very old dictionaries around. I wouldn't be surprised to find that ped- was once paed but evolved. As Rockford used to say, I'll get back to you.

tim · **Posted:** Sat Jan 11, 2003 4:24 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Jim Thomsen:
RICHMOND, England -- Rock legend Pete Townshend has issued a public statement denying being a paedophile after his name was linked with a police Internet porn inquiry. But The Who guitarist and song-writer did admit studying child pornography for research into a campaign against it. He told reporters on Saturday that he told police what he was doing. *** This was posted on cnn.com this morning (no source given, such as Reuters or AP). Should we come across this in our wire travels today and even decide to use it (though right now Maurice Gibb's near-fatal condition supercedes Pete's purported porn predilections in my Nation/World news queue), we should be careful to remove such Anglicizations such as "paedophilia." No American dictionary I could find has a listing under that spelling, and it appears to be a purely British construction that would only confuse American readers, who are sadly, more used to the spelling "pedophilia."We're dealing with this at my paper quite a bit lately with our newest reporter, who's American-born but Canadian-reared ... he seems unable to remove such spellings as "centre" or "colour," as well as purely Canadian constructs such as "Grade 12" instead of the more American "twelfth grade" from his raw copy, and so we're kept busy on the copy desk cleaning the Canuck from his prose ....<hr></blockquote>From dictionary.com:"pedo-2 or ped- or paed- or paedo-
pref.
Child; children: pedodontics."

ADKbrown · **Posted:** Mon Jan 13, 2003 5:45 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by SusanV:

Regarding paed/pedophilia, I checked a 1980 Oxford American Dictionary. It has neither (which I guess says something about our times). When I'm in the office next week, I'll do a little digging--we have some very old dictionaries around. I wouldn't be surprised to find that ped- was once paed but evolved. <hr></blockquote>***The paed- spelling is a Latinization of the original Greek. The ped- is undoubtedly a later simplification. Same with encyclopaedia. ***

SusanV · **Posted:** Mon Jan 13, 2003 6:05 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by ADKbrown:
***The paed- spelling is a Latinization of the original Greek. The ped- is undoubtedly a later simplification. Same with encyclopaedia. ***<hr></blockquote>I figured it was something like that. Thanks for saving me the trouble. :)

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