February 24, 2006
MarkBernstein.org
 

Intimate, ecogenic, or nobitic?

Matthew Josefewicz suggested some even better ideas for what I've been called "intimate publishing" -- Web sites and blogs intended primarily for your immediate circle.

The Greek term for your household -- including servants, employees, retainers, clients, and such -- was oikogenia. So, an intimate weblog would be ecogenic.

The Latin first-person plural ablative pronoun is nobis. So, writing that's meant to be "among us" would be inter nobis nos. An intimate weblog could be nobitic. (Oh dear. I have set a terrible example for the youth of America and the free world. Yes, inter takes the accusative, not the ablative. I remember that now. Who knew how many of my readers read Latin?)

Google reveals that a 1975 paper unsuccessfully tried to launch ecogenic energy as a synonym for renewable energy, and it's an occasional misspelling for the medical term echogenic. Nobitic is clean. Nobigraphic is a google whack.