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This is a purely linguistics inquiry.

One term that's piqued my interest is "anti-Semitism." While it's widely used, the construction (anti- + -ism) feels recent compared to terms like "misogyny."

In German, there's "Judenhass," which seems more integrated into the language's structure (though I understand the historical reasons for its disuse).

This leads me to wonder:

  • In Greek, and potentially Latin (borrowing from Greek), what's the "natural" way to express this concept? Is "judeomisia" (seen online) grammatically correct or is it constructed backwards?
  • Similarly, how are terms like "Islamophobia" translated? The word itself suggests fear of Islam, but often gets used for prejudice against Arabs.
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    Related question: Is "anti" used in Latin?
    – Joonas Ilmavirta
    Commented Jun 26 at 14:06
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    English antisemitism is actually borrowed from German Antisemitismus. The term was specifically coined around 1860 as a more academic (and, when used by antisemites, less pejorative) equivalent to Judenhass
    – Cairnarvon
    Commented Jun 26 at 17:26

2 Answers 2

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Antisemitismus is the only attested way to phrase it:

Praeterea, Ecclesia, quae omnes persecutiones in quosvis homines reprobat, memor communis cum Iudaeis patrimonii, nec rationibus politicis sed religiosa caritate evangelica impulsa, odia, persecutiones, antisemitismi manifestationes, quovis tempore et a quibusvis in Iudaeos habita, deplorat

  • The Vatican, which usually prefers noun phrases not new words in Latin

"Judeomisia" is a fabrication by uneducated English speakers trying to sound smart. There are no educated attestations in Google Scholar. English is freer in terms of "constructed backwards." However, I found no "-misia" suffix in Greek. It is always "miso-" and even that affix isn't productive. Even the "Judeo-" prefix isn't very productive in Greek (1 2 3 4). Classical Latin does not like you creating new words, and Neo-Latin won't understand you if new nouns diverge from English too much. Greek possibly to a lesser degree likewise. It's unlike English words from Greco-Latin. I would either use an established word or a noun phrase. "Islamophobia" is well-formed by itself. Not all languages, especially ancient languages, make the conceptual distinctions we do today in English like if a word "suggests fear" or "suggests hate."

Modern Wikipedia has Antisemitismus, Islamophobia, Αντισημιτισμός, and Ισλαμοφοβία. If there was an established alternative term, there would have been redirects, but there are none (1 2 3 4).

You could also use a noun phrase like odium in iūdaeōs and odium in musulmānōs. Both odium in and odium contra are the most natural. After all, we went centuries saying "the world hating the disciples" without inventing words like "theophobia." If anything, noun phrases feel the least recent.

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    @Tommas Do you have examples of -misia in mind that would help justify its use here?
    – Joonas Ilmavirta
    Commented Jun 26 at 19:09
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    @Tommas I agree it's a bit odd, but odd and wrong are two very different things. All aspects of language are full of oddities like this. The general rule is that usage trumps logic: whatever is used is de facto correct, with some caveats of course.
    – Joonas Ilmavirta
    Commented Jun 26 at 19:39
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    "misia" (both noun and suffix) is neither Ancient nor Modern Greek. We don't know whether the "i" should metathesize or not into "-misia" "missa" "-misa" or something. "phobia" isn't well-formed Ancient Greek either, but it's Modern Greek and is acceptable because it's very productive in Medical Greek/Latin
    – Daniel T
    Commented Jun 26 at 20:10
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    Idk wdym "first position" or "comes from a verb." en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%86%CF%8C%CE%B2%CE%BF%CF%82 was always a noun. Then Greek morphotactics forbids "*phobiaislamo" because it's supposed to be "islam + -o- " + phobos + -ia." See where dictionaries put the "-" symbol. Additionally, European languages like to delete a word's suffixes before turning it into a prefix
    – Daniel T
    Commented Jun 26 at 20:42
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    You might find the comments and links on this question to be relevant here.
    – cmw
    Commented Jun 27 at 2:02
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There is a difference between Anti-jud(a)eismus and Anti-semitismus. The former means opposition or hatred toward the Jewish religion and its followers. The latter means hatred of Jews conceived as a race or a nation. The anti-judaeist believes than the Jews can be saved by conversion to Christianity, but for the anti-semite Jews cannot escape their status as Jews even if they convert to another religion.. Anti-semitism is an invention of the 19th century and there is no concept of Anti-semitism in classical or mediaeval texts. The concept of anti-judaeism is entrenched in Christian theology and there a whole corpus of Christian treatises “contra Judaeos”.

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