The English Oracle

Is “symmetricity” a word?

--------------------------------------------------
Hire the world's top talent on demand or became one of them at Toptal: https://topt.al/25cXVn
and get $2,000 discount on your first invoice
--------------------------------------------------

Music by Eric Matyas
https://www.soundimage.org
Track title: Fantascape Looping

--

Chapters
00:00 Is “Symmetricity” A Word?
00:13 Accepted Answer Score 9
01:23 Thank you

--

Full question
https://english.stackexchange.com/questi...

--

Content licensed under CC BY-SA
https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/lice...

--

Tags
#meaning #isitaword #derivationalmorphology

#avk47



ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 9


Tiger, Tiger: Symmetricity, Symmetricality, or Symmetricalness?

It doesn't really matter whether this or that dictionary includes or omits it. It is the regular product of applying productive derivational morphology to a basic English word for conversion purposes.

It doesn’t matter whether you use symmetricity, symmetricality, or symmetricalness — any native speaker and indeed any competent second-language user will know exactly what you mean by your term.

This is because you’ve used a basic vocabulary term, the adjective symmetric, and applyied standard suffixes to convert that adjective into a substantive.

The Mathematics of Nominalization Doubly Applied

However, careful writers will wonder why you used a noun-making suffix on an adjective which was itself already the product of someone else applying an adjective-making suffix to. In other words, this math is overly complicated:

adjective₁ = noun₁      + adjective-making suffix
noun₂      = adjective₁ + noun-making      suffix
noun₂      = noun₁      + adjective-making suffix + noun-making suffix

Seems to me you should use noun1 in the first place instead of adding two suffixes to it to make noun2.

What’s the original noun, you ask? That would be symmetry.


Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?