On Saturday 21 September 2002 06:24, Adam Williamson wrote:
On Sat, 2002-09-21 at 05:04, Tom Parmenter wrote:
Both pediatrician and pedophile come from the Greek prefix paedo- meaning "child".
This is why those of us living in *EDUCATED* countries still spell them "paediatrician" and "paedophile".
;)
I believe the root produced by "pedis", meaning "foot", is "podi" - "podiatrics" being stuff to do with feet, and "podiatrist" being someone who looks after your feet.
"pod-" and "ped-" both mean "foot", but in Greek and Latin respectively (the nominatives are "pous" and "pes"). Neither has anything to do with "pais", Greek for "child", or "paideia", "discipline, education, upbringing of a child". The spelling "-paedia" comes from importing the Greek word into Latin. "paediatrician" does not begin with the morpheme "paedia"; it's "pais" plus "iatros", "doctor". Of course a Wikipediatrician...
phma