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I hate to beg the question, but what's stopping us from creating new terminology ourselves? English is malleable and I've witnessed new categories and distincti
by BitwiseFool 5y ago
I hate to beg the question, but what's stopping us from creating new terminology ourselves? English is malleable and I've witnessed new categories and distinctions spring up in my lifetime. For instance, 'cis' for gender identity matching biological sex. Growing up I never had a word for that concept and I don't think academia adopted the term until relatively recently.
- rovolo 5y agoThe difficult part is deciding on the definition of the concept, not picking the name of the concept. There are lots of different terms and concepts you could be using to categorize types of science, but most of them probably don't match what you care about.
- pjc50 5y ago"cis-" as a prefix for the opposite of "trans-" dates back to Latin ("cisalpine Gaul"); it was first used in relation to gender identity in German in the early half of the 20th century, but all the pioneering research by German doctors was destroyed by Hitler.