Hi Peter.
Karenina?) It is possible that mathematicians actually reintroduced it after it had already been extinct. Perhaps Lambek is the culprit, or someone like Grothendieck, or even Girard.
Well, Girard is too young for this. Grothendieck rarely wrote in English. I will ask Lambek: it probably is something he remembered from his youth. Marcia (in her editor's r\^ole) considers it quite obsolete, and wonders why mathematicians use it... actually, one should trace the Latin route through French to English. I think the circumflex in the French denotes some missing letters from the Latin, but maybe that's not the correct etymology. Anyway, the English usage (in all the books we have here, including Fowler's and many dictionaries in French and English) definitely point to the sans-circumflex as the preferred spelling. But I'll try to find out more... Best, Phil
selinger@mathstat.dal.ca (Peter Selinger) asked:
Subject: categories: "role" vs. "r\^ole"
Does anyone know why it is common, in papers on logic, semantics, and category theory, to spell the word "role" the French way, i.e., with a circumflex accent? ...
Fowler, in his <i>Modern English Usage</i>, has this to say under the heading <b>Role, rôle</b>: "Though the word is etymologically the same as <i>roll</i>, meaning the roll of MS. that contained an actor's part, the differentiation is too useful to be sacrificed by spelling always <i>roll</i>. But, there being no other word <i>role</i> from which it has to be kept distinct, both the italics and the accent might well be abandoned. As to the sanctity of the French form, see MORALE." And, under <b>Morale</b>, Fowler begins: "Is a combination of pandantry and Gallicism to bully us into ... ? ... The right course is to ... abstain from the French ... , of which we have no need."
As far as I can tell, the accented spelling is a strange ideosyncrasy, given that the word "role", without the accent, is a perfectly acceptable, and very common, English word. ... I realize that Merriam Webster's Dictionary allows "r\^ole" as an alternate spelling (the Oxford English Dictionary does not, as far as I can see online). ... Maybe this habit has been passed on for generations. Can it perhaps be traced back to a misspelling in some influential article?
Fowler would call it another result of "pedantry with French words."
selinger@mathstat.dal.ca (Peter Selinger) asked:
Subject: categories: "role" vs. "r\^ole"
Does anyone know why it is common, in papers on logic, semantics, and category theory, to spell the word "role" the French way, i.e., with a circumflex accent? ...
Fowler, in his <i>Modern English Usage</i>, has this to say under the heading <b>Role, rôle</b>: "Though the word is etymologically the same as <i>roll</i>, meaning the roll of MS. that contained an actor's part, the differentiation is too useful to be sacrificed by spelling always <i>roll</i>. But, there being no other word <i>role</i> from which it has to be kept distinct, both the italics and the accent might well be abandoned. As to the sanctity of the French form, see MORALE." And, under <b>Morale</b>, Fowler begins: "Is a combination of pandantry and Gallicism to bully us into ... ? ... The right course is to ... abstain from the French ... , of which we have no need."
As far as I can tell, the accented spelling is a strange ideosyncrasy, given that the word "role", without the accent, is a perfectly acceptable, and very common, English word. ... I realize that Merriam Webster's Dictionary allows "r\^ole" as an alternate spelling (the Oxford English Dictionary does not, as far as I can see online). ... Maybe this habit has been passed on for generations. Can it perhaps be traced back to a misspelling in some influential article?
Fowler would call it another result of "pedantry with French words."
participants (2)
-
Fred E.J. Linton -
Phil Scott