Concept
-logy
Overview
-logy is a suffix in the English language, used with words originally adapted from Ancient Greek ending in -λογία (-logía). The earliest English examples were anglicizations of the French -logie, which was in turn inherited from the Latin -logia.
The suffix became productive in English from the 18th century, allowing the formation of new terms with no Latin or Greek precedent.
The English suffix has two separate main senses, reflecting two sources of the -λογία suffix in Greek:
a combining form used in the names of school or bodies of knowledge, e.g., theology (loaned from Latin in the 14th century) or sociology. In words of the type theology, the suffix is derived originally from -λογ- (-log-) (a variant of -λεγ-, -leg-), from the Greek verb λέγειν (legein, 'to speak'). The suffix has the sense of "the character or deportment of one who speaks or treats of [a certain subject]", or more succinctly, "the study of [a certain subject]". (The Ancient Greek noun λόγος lógos mentioned below can also be translated, among other things, as "subject matter".)
the root word nouns that refer to kinds of speech, writing or collections of writing, e.g., eulogy or trilogy. In words of this type, the "-logy" element is derived from the Greek noun λόγος (logos, 'speech', 'account', 'story'). The suffix has the sense of "[a certain kind of] speaking or writing".
Philology is an exception: while its meaning is closer to the first sense, the etymology of the word is similar to the second sense.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
This word, therefore, expressing so very abstract and metaphysical an idea, would not easily or readily occur to the first formers of language. What are called the personal pronouns, it may be observed, are among the last words of which children learn to make use. A child, speaking of itself, says, _Billy walks_, _Billy sits_, instead of _I walk_, _I sit_.
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
States what -logy is.
_Vernunft_ is derived from _vernehmen_, which is not a synonym for the verb to hear, but signifies the consciousness of the meaning of thoughts communicated in words. It is by the help of language alone that reason accomplishes its most important achievements,—the united action of several individuals, the planned co-operation of many thousands, civilisation, the state; also science, the storing up of experience, the…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
States what -logy is.
First of all, languages are by this simplification rendered more prolix, several words having become necessary to express what could have been expressed by a single word before. Thus the words, _Dei_ and _Deo_, in the Latin, sufficiently show, without any addition, what relation the object signified is understood to stand in to the objects expressed by the other words in the sentence. But to express the same…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
States what -logy is.
Related ideas
- Analogy
- Ancient Greek
- Latin
- Perseus Digital Library
- Sociology
- Philology
- Root (linguistics)
- Technology
- Theology
- Logos
- Suffix
Place in the tradition
Part of Deontology.