2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumpedantic question: Nazis or neo-Nazis ?
Unless someone was active in the NSDAP before it was disbanded, I always say neo-Nazis. Is this correct usage ? /pedantic mode off
Nitram
(22,877 posts)TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)Greek word "neos", which means youth, or young, or something like that.
At any rate, it's common usage is as "new" something or other.
Ergo, these pieces of shit calling themselves Nazis now are neo-pieces of shit.
Igel
(35,356 posts)Older Greek still had the w in it, written as a digamma: newos.
A very neat, clean cognate with English "new." Pretty much the exact same form, 2000 years after the breakup of Indo-European, with the same meaning.
In Slavic "nov-": In Slavic "ew"+ vowel regularly became "ow" + vowel. So *newos > nov-. Novgorod "Newtown" is a city in NW Russia, for instance. Novi Sad is a town in Serbia.
"Nae" in Hindi, but that's normal: The root's na-, and all "o" and "a" became "a". Persian has "nou". Their traditional new year is "Nouruz," meaning "New day".
A neo-Nazi is a "new Nazi". Different but similar. A neo-liberal is a "new liberal". Different but similar. A neo-conservative is a "new conservative." Different, but similar (and, oddly, the word was coined not for conservatives of a different stripe but for some old-school liberals or progressives who became new conservatives. Ronald Radosh and his ilk. You have to look very carefully to see how the neo-____ differs from the original because different people use the words in different ways without bothering to notice. Paleo-conservatives were not neo-conservatives, by any stretch of the imagination, nor were neo-liberals just recently minted paleo-liberals.)
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)TexasProgresive
(12,158 posts)kairos12
(12,872 posts)TexasProgresive
(12,158 posts)Most don't get my sense of humor.
kairos12
(12,872 posts)TexasProgresive
(12,158 posts)PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)Igel
(35,356 posts)Then there are "nazis." Grammar nazis, for instance. No capital and purely metaphorical.