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Mixed -ologies

The suffix -ology is a Latin one, meaning a study or branch of knowledge. It's getting a bit abused these days, crammed onto non-Latin words to make things sound smart. I'm sorry, but they just bother me. It's like mixing apples and oranges.  I will use Google Ngrams to find when each word comes into play.

Angelology - the study of angels?  I'm surprised I couldn't find a more academic word for this. MW has the first known use going back to 1663.  On my Ngram searches, the word starts to appear as far back as 1830.  There is a definitive work - Angelology by George Clayton (1851) - that does establish the age of the word and gives is a boost that it never comes back down from.  And the word is in the Universal American Dictionary as far back as 1861.

Bumpology - This is a sarcastic name for "Phrenology", the disgraced old study of measuring the bumps on people's heads to determine their personality and values.  This one gets a thumbs up for being annoying deliberately.

Gemology - the study and certification of gems. Maybe they think it's cute, because it looks like geology. I don't know.  This word goes back to about 1930, much older that I was expecting.

Ripperology - this is an odd one, the study of the Jack the Ripper cases.  The OED gives an earliest known usage in the 1970s but it's under the radar until it starts to take off in 1991, and after two different books called Ripperology came out in 2006-7 (by Robin Odell and Paul Begg), the word is now everywhere in the true-crime world.

Textology - the study of texts as communication.  The word appears around 1955.

Ufology - the study of UFOs. Sorry, that's just annoying.  The word appears around 1962.

Webology - I briefly heard of this as the study of the World Wide Web, but it turns out to be just the name of a journal on that topic, not a word of its own

These words were invented just to make things sound scientific. I realize that the Latin roots can be a bit obscure, and might seem antiquated. But I can't just call myself a "wordologist" and force people to accept the word, can I? 

Oh heck, "wordology" has been mentioned a few times.  

- There's a book "Wordology, study and review time," by Menford G. Mohagen (1939) and "Wordology" was a vocabulary builder advertised by Wordology Associates, in Popular Mechanics in the 1930s.

I found a few scattered quotes but it is very rare and never sounds quite serious:

- "Twentieth century wordology is a mosaic of the centuries gone before." - Forbes - Volume 19 - Page 19 (1926)
- It shows up in I.R.S. Hearings of 1946.  Here, it's a derogatory word for being overly verbose: "Let me give you another example of the 'wordology' used by the Bureau which necessarily handicaps the whole administration of this statute."

There is an odd exception: "Tautology" is not a study at all. A tautology is a vacuous and obvious repetition, like "brilliant genius". It comes from "tauto-" (the same) and suggests a case study in monotony. It also has a strictly logical meaning of a statement which is always true.

Only time will tell which words survive.

Maybe I need a business card with "Weirdological Consultant" on it.

Aug 2024 update: OLOGY itself is a word, according to MW and Oxford dictionaries, along with the plural OLOGIES.  Both "acyrology" and "cacology" refer to poor choices of words, so those fit in here.

Did I forget to mention that there is a Pieology a few blocks away from us?  It's a pizza place.  Clever name, unless you don't like these mixed -ologies.

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