From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/7434 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Robert Dawson Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: Terminology; categorical versus categorial. Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 14:58:59 -0300 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Robert Dawson NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1347046237 28784 80.91.229.3 (7 Sep 2012 19:30:37 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2012 19:30:37 +0000 (UTC) Cc: categories@mta.ca To: peasthope@shaw.ca Original-X-From: majordomo@mlist.mta.ca Fri Sep 07 21:30:39 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from smtpy.mta.ca ([138.73.1.128]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1TA4GD-0001lx-4n for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Fri, 07 Sep 2012 21:30:37 +0200 Original-Received: from mlist.mta.ca ([138.73.1.63]:44965) by smtpy.mta.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.77) (envelope-from ) id 1TA4FU-0002ob-Py; Fri, 07 Sep 2012 16:29:52 -0300 Original-Received: from majordomo by mlist.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TA4Fq-00009v-1j for categories-list@mlist.mta.ca; Fri, 07 Sep 2012 16:30:14 -0300 In-Reply-To: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:7434 Archived-At: On 06/09/2012 3:39 PM, peasthope@shaw.ca wrote: > Apologies in case this story is in the archive. I failed to find it. > > According to online dictionaries, categorical and categorial can be > synonyms. Almost everyone seems to prefer categorical whereas > categorial comes from the simple rule of replacing the last vowel of > the noun with "ial". > > So, is the preference for categorical just an inheritance from early > authors? Is there a stronger reason to use it? Is the explanation > in the archive? Firstly, the usage goes back far before category theory. The early authors include Kant and W. S. Gilbert. Secondly, I think "categorical" has always been the more common usage. Robert [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]