Talk:television

The adjective definition should really be removed; this is just a noun used as a modifier. RSvK 20:30, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Etymology

Words don't generally come from Latin and Greek, and it is believed that "Televison" comes from the Greek tele- (far away), and "vision" is from 'old' Ancient Greek:

Fιδ

The 'F' is pronounced "v" and the letter itself is called a digamma. Fιδ is the verb stem of "see" in 'old' Classical Greek.

As Classical Greek progressed and evolved, the digamma was lost and the word stem Fιδ became ιδ.

This explains the dicrepancy between the origins of the two parts of the word (and is definately correct).

My source for this was a Cambridge Uni. scolar, so I belive it to be correct. It is also stated as correct in the OED (I believe) — This unsigned comment was added by MDP23 (talk • contribs) at 19:40, 25 April 2006 (UTC).

Added circa 2006; original editor name or IP seems to be lost. It's silly; it doesn't come from Greek or Latin, it comes from French télé- and French vision, arguably calqued into English as English tele- and English vision. (That's arguably a little silly, but it definitely doesn't come off as an French word imported to English, like cafe does. The OED 1 Supplement gives English tele- and vision as the source.) By the 20th century, the number of people who cared or knew whether word parts were originally Latin or Greek had dropped quite a bit.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:47, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Not lost. I've added the {{unsigned}} template with the correct information. The person who posted it is still around, but this isn't their main wiki, and I doubt they would have much to say about something they posted 14 years ago. I agree, though: the pre-Classical Ancient Greek word has absolutely nothing to do with this: it was coined after the invention of the technology, which was definitely not two and a half or so millennia ago. The "vision" part is easily explained by the routine loss of d and t before s in Latin- an s which was present in that particular Latin form but not in the alleged ancestral form given above. Ancient Greek never lost the d, which is present in English words like idol and suffixes like -oid that came originally from Ancient Greek. Any similarity between the reconstructed pre-Classical Ancient Greek form and the Latin one is just due to the fact that both are descended from Proto-Indo-European. The idea that everything came from Greek hasn't been taken seriously since Richard Valpy, a couple of centuries ago. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:52, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

television set

The translations of the 2nd sense need to be merged with those for television set. --Anatoli 10:24, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

"television set" is dated. Accordingly, IMHO, it should not have translations (unless they translations are similarly "dated". Is that what you had in mind. I am very much in favor of more use of {{trans-see}} in cases like this and more so for terms that are "obsolete" and "rare". What do you think? DCDuring TALK 11:29, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I meant {{trans-see}}, if television set is the older word, it should get it, after checking that no translation is left out. I looked at the number of translations to be checked and thought that I won't do it right now ;) --Anatoli 11:57, 21 July 2010 (UTC)