Emeriti Faculty

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Athel Cornish-Bowden - 29 Sep 2008 17:00 GMT

Visting a web site at UCLA today I saw a list headed "Emeriti Faculty".

I can't manage to convince myself that this makes sense.

"Faculty" is surely a singular noun. In BrE we might say "the faculty
are...", but previous discussions on AUE suggest that you couldn't say
that in AmE, which is surely what they speak in Los Angeles. In any
case, even in BrE I would regard this is one faculty with several
emeritus professors.

Regardless of whether you agree with that, "emeritus" is clearly an
adjective in this context, and adjectives don't decline in English,
unless they form parts of complete phrases that have not lost their
foreignness, like "chaises longues". So even if "faculty" is plural it
still needs an invariant adjective.

Is there any evidence that in classical Rome they used a word
"emeritus" in anything resembling its modern sense? Did they have
emeritus consuls, etc.? If not, what justification could there be for
declining an English word in the way it would have been declined if it
had been used in classical Latin?

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athel

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Mark Brader - 29 Sep 2008 17:38 GMT

> Visting a web site at UCLA today I saw a list headed "Emeriti Faculty".
>
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> are...", but previous discussions on AUE suggest that you couldn't say
> that in AmE, which is surely what they speak in Los Angeles.

I think "faculty" is being used in the sense of "faculty member",
which is invariant in the plural. "Jones, Jonssen, and Johnson are
faculty here, but Jonsson is visiting from Oslo." "All faculty are
welcome to attend the meeting."

> Regardless of whether you agree with that, "emeritus" is clearly an
> adjective in this context, and adjectives don't decline in English,

True.

> unless they form parts of complete phrases that have not lost their
> foreignness, like "chaises longues".

And therefore it's being used as an adjective in Latin, not English.
It's certainly a bit precious, but I won't call it worng.

> Is there any evidence that in classical Rome they used a word
> "emeritus" in anything resembling its modern sense? Did they have
> emeritus consuls, etc.?

According to Cassell's Latin Dictionary, the base verb is emerere
or (as a deponent verb) emereri, and its base meaning is "to obtain
by service, earn completely". (Emeritus is the participle, declined
as a 1st/2nd declension adjective.) And then it says:

Hence partic.[iple] as subst. [noun]: emeritus, a soldier that
has served his time, a veteran; in plur.[al]: Tac[itus].

Transf.[erred usage], of other service: annuum tempus (sc.
magistratus), Cic. L. [Cicero's letters]: annuae operae
emerentur, Cic. L.

So I'd say that's a yes. It goes on to cite a sense applied to horses
where the word means "worn out, finished with".

> If not, what justification could there be for declining an English
> word in the way it would have been declined if it had been used
> in classical Latin?

You might instead ask what justification there is for using a Latin word
in place of a similar English one. And I might ask why you limit your
remarks to *classical* Latin.

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Mark Brader "... we still feel that color is hard
Toronto on the eyes for so long a picture ..."
msb@vex.net -- N.Y. Times review of GONE WITH THE WIND

My text in this article is in the public domain.

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Athel Cornish-Bowden - 29 Sep 2008 17:59 GMT

[ ... ]

>> Is there any evidence that in classical Rome they used a word
>> "emeritus" in anything resembling its modern sense? Did they have
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> magistratus), Cic. L. [Cicero's letters]: annuae operae
> emerentur, Cic. L.

Thanks -- this is useful, more informative than what I found in the SOED.

> So I'd say that's a yes. It goes on to cite a sense applied to horses
> where the word means "worn out, finished with".

As one whose application for emeritus status is pending, I'm not sure
how much I like the idea that it means "worn out, finished with"!

>> If not, what justification could there be for declining an English
>> word in the way it would have been declined if it had been used
>> in classical Latin?
>
> You might instead ask what justification there is for using a Latin word
> in place of a similar English one.

Well I did indeed have that question in mind, though I didn't feel like
making it explicit (coming as I do from a university that names (most
of) its degrees in English, which is why I'm D.Phil., D.Sc. and not
Ph.D., Sc.D., I can afford to ask it).

> And I might ask why you limit your
> remarks to *classical* Latin.

Because the Latin I learned was classical. I don't know much about
mediaeval Latin.

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athel

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Maria C. - 29 Sep 2008 20:15 GMT

Mark Brader sigged:

> "... we still feel that color is hard on the eyes for so long a
> picture ..."
> -- N.Y. Times review of GONE WITH THE WIND

Boy, that NYT bunch is so conservative.

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Maria C.

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Marius Hancu - 29 Sep 2008 17:42 GMT

On Sep 29, 12:00 pm, Athel Cornish-Bowden <athel...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

> Visting a web site at UCLA today I saw a list headed "Emeriti Faculty".

You can also find it at the NYT:

------
Did an Exposé Help Sink Harvard's President? - New York Times

"I certainly got people calling me up from the faculty, including
emeriti faculty and people I hadn't seen in a long time, because I was
quoted in it, ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/business/media/27mclintick.html
----

where you can also find many pages with:
306 from nytimes.com for "the faculty are"

Marius Hancu

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Discussion Groups / English Usage / September 2008

Emeriti Faculty