Talk:-cratic

If real, please format

Of or befitting -crat is meaningless. Debatable whether this exist or if it's just forms ending in -crat then suffixed with -ic. Even in nouns ending -acy where there is no t, it could be argued that the suffix is -ic with an extra t. Perhaps move to -tic as we allow im- as a variant of in- and the same for ir-. The extra t alone could be worth having an entry (cf. -ability, where -able + -ity ought to give -ablity, but doesn'y). Mglovesfun (talk) 21:59, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

If we keep it, I suggest "ruling, or relating to rule". Equinox ◑ 22:01, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

RfV debate

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-cratic

Not sure this exists other than as a string of six characters at the end of certain words; I think all of the derived terms are from noun + suffix -ic. Definitely autocratic is not from auto- +‎ -cratic but autocrat +‎ -ic, or perhaps directly from French, Latin or Ancient Greek. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:23, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't see how this is a RFV question. The parsing as auto + -cratic is as plausible to me as autocrat + -ic. Entry democratic claims the etymology to be "democrat" + "-ic", but I don't know how they arrived at the claim. If the English trinity of "democracy", "democratic" and "democrat" stems from French, then it is worth looking at the French trinity of "démocratie", "démocratique" and "démocrate", for which there does not seem to be the case that "démocratique" = "démocrate" + suffix. OTOH, "democratic" could stem from or be analyzed as morphologically deriving from "democracy", in which case the candidate suffix "-cratic" would not be there. In any case, again, whether there is or is not a suffix "-cratic" does not seem to be RFV-suitable question but rather a question that involves an analysis that is to a considerable degree speculative and non-empirical. Finally, the suffix is obviously present in "So-" + "-cratic" (a joke). --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:08, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it's not an rfv question. It looks to me like it started out with words like democratic and autocratic, that can be traced back through French all the way back to Greek as whole words. Those are definitely not derived by adding -ic or -cratic. Later on, though, people noticed the -cracy/-cratic pattern, and started coining words to fit it. Those later words might be analyzable as -crat + -ic, but given the -cracy/-cratic alternation, -cratic seems more likely. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:40, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Well what is it a question for? RFD seems inappropriate because its existence is in question. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:19, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I think the key is that rfv is for terms whose existence can be verified by examining usage. How do we verify this? It seems to hinge more on interpretation or analysis, rather than usage. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:01, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I think that the best way to determine the productivity of a suffix is to find uses of that suffix for which related suffix variations are absent. For example, if "elbowcratic" existed but "elbowcracy" or "elbowcrat" did not. Another way might be to find uses of the whole suffix strung onto words with a hyphen, as with:

2003, Henry Wang, Socialism and Governance: A Comparison Between Maoist and Dengist Governance:

By saying that Dengist political system is a facto-cratic polity, it is not meant that the Party is committed to speaking truth.

Cheers! bd2412 T 16:53, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

OED has an entry and offers mobcratic (variant of mobocratic) as an example that is non-French/Latin derived. SpinningSpark 13:36, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Cited. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 18:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC)