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[-] jaybone@lemmy.zip 7 points 4 days ago

Vision is scope, but scope is visor?

[-] Skua@kbin.earth 5 points 4 days ago

I think what has happened here is that OOP has tripped up on what "vision" meant

We seem to have gotten "scope" from Ancient Greek twice. One is σκοπέω (skopéō), which is a verb for "look at" or "examine", and the other is σκοπός (skopós), a noun for "watcher". So I can see how they'd get scope (verb) = vision and scope (noun) = visor

Unfortunately the Latin word that we get vision from means "eyesight", which neither sense of scope works for. I think the appropriate old Greek word is ὅρᾱσῐς (hórāsĭs), so maybe remotorasis would be a better guess for "television" on this post

(disclaimer, I'm not a linguist and also don't really know anything about Latin or Ancient Greek, I might be wrong)

[-] IndigoGollum@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

It could also be that they chose "remotoscope" over "remotorasis" intentionally because the former is such a fun word.

[-] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

"scope" also fits in with how we already use that word, e.g. microscope/telescope/periscope.
I'd wager most (non-indian, because i'd assume they don't use the latin/greek parts of english as much) english speakers could figure out what "remotoscope" means even completely devoid of context.

[-] Skua@kbin.earth 1 points 4 days ago

It's definitely the more fun option

[-] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 4 days ago

I imagine it has to do with verb conjugation

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago

You can see the colors, right? It's swapping Greek roots for Latin roots... and vice versa.

this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2026
412 points (99.0% liked)

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