Words

How much has going to school changed us?

That strikes me as a fuzzy question; perhaps there should be a new field of study called quantum sociology.  Any changes to us would have happened gradually without our being aware of them but an outside observer would notice a difference immediately.  Let me give this topic a bit more thought as I suspect the waters will get deep and become a difficult slog.

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Once in a while Uncle Ken has invented new words and, not fully understanding the context or meaning, I voiced my objections but now I realize he had the right idea after all.  The English language needs new words, or at least new suffixes.  Take tractor, for instance.  Originally, the word meant "something that pulls," from the Latin verb trahere, which is why the driver hauling a load to Walmart is operating a semi-tractor/trailer, half tractor, half trailer.  Mention tractors at a truck stop and I doubt they will bring up Allis Chalmers or Oliver.  Maybe they will, I don't know.

But what about the little guy Mr. Beagles recently acquired?  It's a tractor for sure, but shouldn't there be a word for the smaller versions?  In Spanish it might be tractorito or in Italian, tractorino but English seems to lack a good suffix for such a thing. The best example I can think of is -ette, like the word cigarette came from cigar but that sounds awfully French to me.  Perhaps it's in the structure of the English language to prefer prefixes instead, like mini-, maxi-, and ultra-.  But a mini-tractor just doesn't sound right to me.