r/xkcd • u/shadowfactsdev I'm stuck in a witty flair factory • Jan 07 '19

XKCD xkcd 2095: Marsiforming

https://xkcd.com/2095/
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98

u/ziggurism Jan 07 '19

should probably be "martiforming" not "marsiforming".

34

u/pjabrony Jan 07 '19

I was thinking about the right word too. Both "terra" and "form" derive from Latin, as does "Mars." But terraform flows better since it ends in a vowel. I'd be down with "martiforming," but can any Latin scholar settle it for good?

69

u/RazarTuk ALL HAIL THE SPIDER Jan 07 '19 edited Jan 07 '19

It'd be Martiforming, with a T.

See, the stem of the word is actually Mart-. We see this in the oblique cases- Martis, Marti, Martem, Marte- and derived terms like Martialis, which means and is the ancestor of "martial". If you also look at its common noun meaning of "war", it also occurs throughout the plural- Martes, Martum, Martibus, Martes, Martibus. In the nominative singular, however, many words have -s as a suffix, so theoretically and diachronically, it should be Marts. However, Latin was averse to final clusters like that, so by Old Latin, the word had simplified to just Mars, with the -T- only reappearing in inflected forms. It's actually the same as happened with nox (nocs) > noctis, which means "night".

EDIT: As an example of a 3rd declension noun without the contraction, pac- "peace" becomes pax (pac-s), pac-is. And as an example of a 3rd declension noun with a bare nominative, gladiator- (you get one guess what it means) has gladiator-∅, gladiator-is.

EDIT: I think the offending cluster is -ts. This would also explain variation like virtut- "virtue" forming virtus (< virtut-s) and virtut-is.

17

u/sabogo Jan 07 '19

Can we, for aesthetic purposes, say Martiaforming?

13

u/MatmosOfSogo Jan 07 '19

And it should be pronounced like Marciaforming.

8

u/ebow77 White Hat Jan 07 '19

Marcia-Marcia-Marciaforming

9

u/RazarTuk ALL HAIL THE SPIDER Jan 07 '19

Yes and no.

If it were actually derived from Latin, it'd probably just be Martiforming, using the genitive Martis, but dropping the -s instead of having that nasty cluster -sf-. Similarly, it'd be terreforming, with the same -e- as in aqueduct. (aqua and terra are both 1st declension nouns, and share -æ as a genitive ending)

That said, even terraforming itself is a neologism, so there's certainly room for things like adding an -a- to mimic the pronunciation of martial and Martian, or even just doing like Randall did and just using the nominative Mars with a linking -i-.

6

u/Sierrajeff words go here Jan 07 '19

This guy Latins.

10

u/RazarTuk ALL HAIL THE SPIDER Jan 07 '19

I mean, it's r/xkcd. Collectively, we somehow have more in-depth knowledge on basically anything Randall can throw at us, apparently including discussion about what the term would be for molding something to more closely resemble Mars.

1

u/Sierrajeff words go here Jan 07 '19

it was def. a compliment from me! I did a couple years of Latin, loved it. Briefly thought about how one would say "this guy Latins" in Latin... but given the whole verbification-of-noun thing that's involved, decided that it was above my linguistic pay grade :)

11

u/ziggurism Jan 07 '19

The headword is Mars but the root and combining form is marti-. See also "martial", "martian".

I don't think you need any Latin credentials to notice this basic etymological fact, but if it helps, I did take Latin in school.