Talk:seponate

RFV discussion

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Not seeing it durably archived.​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:00, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Well.

• google books:"seponate" gets three hits: two scannos for "separate", and one irrelevant adjective use that I think is a typo/error for separate ("The district magistrate and the superintendent of police should think of each other as two seponate wheels of a bullock cart, each substantially import for the other.").
• google books:"seponates" gets one hit, a scanno for "separates".
• google books:"seponating" gets no hits at all.
• google books:"seponated" gets six hits: three relevant; one that seems relevant from the quoted snippet on the search page, but that Snippet View won't actually show me; one typo/error for saponated; and one irrelevant use where it seems to mean something like dismissed (" […] Athias defended himself before the Sheriff and the case was seponated.").

I've added the three relevant, visible cites to the entry, but something is wrong here. I really don't think this is some real-but-extremely-rare word that has somehow made it into b.g.c.-indexed sources just three or four times in the past hundred years — and seemingly always by Northern European writers (though I'm not certain about that part). Rather, I think it must be some sort of rare error. Unfortunately, I just don't know what the correct word is (if it's an error for an English word that the Northern Europeans are accidentally Swedishizing or something), or what the source word is (if there's a Swedish word that writers are mistakenly assuming has an English cognate), or what.

—Ruakh_TALK 23:08, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

There's apparently more at Scholar. But see sepono (“lay aside, separate, reserve, take away from”). It seems like some barbarous Medical Latin malformation, based on that word. The past participle of (deprecated template usage) sepono being (deprecated template usage) sepostus or (deprecated template usage) sepositus. DCDuring TALK 00:08, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. My first thought, given the -ate, was Latin/French, but I couldn't find any French, and the Northern European connection, albeit tenuous, was too tempting. (Of course, it could be an Englishing of a barbarous Northern European Medical Latin malformation, but I still haven't found any evidence of that.) —Ruakh_TALK 01:21, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

The Google Scholar hits have a similar bias toward Scandavian authors. DCDuring TALK 02:04, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Removing a medication or treatment from a patient is in modern Swedish utsätta (“to put aside; literally: to set out”). There is a less common synonym seponera and the verb suffix -era normally corresponds to French verb suffix -er, German -ieren and English -ate. Seponera is listed in NE.se and in SAOB, but not in SAOL 6, 8 or 13. The SAOB ("the Swedish OED") entry was edited in 1967 and presents this etymology (my translation): compare German seponieren, also English sepone; from Latin seponere (“to put aside”), from se- (“on its own, separate, aside”) (see also secernera), and ponere (“lay, set, put”) (compare ponera). End quote. Considering that German was the primary foreign language taught in Swedish schools until 1946, it seems likely to me that when these early 20th century English texts by Scandinavian authors use "seponate", it is a home-made translation of the Swedish/German seponera/seponieren. Maybe you should look up English sepone, as suggested by SAOB. It sounds a lot like (deprecated template usage) postpone. --LA2 06:46, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch! What's weird is, all of those various verbs also seem to be pretty rare. seponera was actually my first guess for Swedish, but when I saw how rare it was (just a few hundred Ghits, and only five non-Italian b.g.c. hits), I decided that it couldn't be the source of this. German seponieren seems to be more common, though. Oh, and the Dutch cognate seponeren explains the "case was seponated" cite above (see [1], which also mentions a French etymon *seponer that I can't attest). —Ruakh_TALK 12:18, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

One can also find a few instances in English of forms of seposit among the much larger number of scannos of forms of (deprecated template usage) deposit. To me this exemplifies the risk of including very rare terms in a dictionary without conspicuous use-only-at-the-risk-of-not-being-understood warnings on every appearance of the word. We have no means of doing so except at the entry. Search engines and reusers of our material may not prominently display such warnings. Consequently I am not sure that such words should be in principal namespace. Perhaps they need to be seponed in some kind of less prominent namespace. DCDuring TALK 12:43, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Keep in mind that Google has not yet scanned any library in Sweden, only the occasional Swedish books that made their way to libraries abroad. This means Google will digitize the works of Linnaeus, but not for example the Swedish Bible translations. (At Oxford, you would study Vulgata, KJV and Luther's German Bible, but probably not the Swedish or Danish translations.) Medical literature in the Swedish language would only rarely make it to libraries abroad, I guess. But German was "the language of science" in the 19th century. --LA2 14:05, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

RFV passed. Note: Some context tags have been added, but a full-on usage note may be warranted. —Ruakh_TALK 20:16, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Norwegian "seponere"

I'm an English doctor working in Norway. I have never heard of or used the word "Seponate" in English medical practice. However, in Norway Doctors use the word "Seponere" all the time to indicate the cessation of specific medication. This is not a word that is in common use amongst members of the public, only amongst health care professionals. My Norwegian colleagues do not know the origin of the word. It is, however, a very useful word as it is highly specific, short, easy to use and flows well in Norwegian language. Norwegian medical practice was heavily influenced by the Germans before WWII. Chrinc (talk) 11:32, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! —Ruakh_TALK 12:43, 31 May 2012 (UTC)