this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2026
325 points (98.8% liked)
Linguistics Humor
1755 readers
171 users here now
Do you like languages and linguistics ? Here is for having fun about it
For serious linguistics content: !linguistics@mander.xyz
Rules:
- 1- Stay on Topic
Post about linguistics or language humor & memes - 2- No Racism/Violence
- 3- No Public Shaming No shaming someone that could be identifiable or recognizable
- 4- Avoid spam and duplicates
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Vision is scope, but scope is visor?
You can see the colors, right? It's swapping Greek roots for Latin roots... and vice versa.
I think what has happened here is that OOP has tripped up on what "vision" meant
We seem to have gotten "scope" from Ancient Greek twice. One is σκοπέω (skopéō), which is a verb for "look at" or "examine", and the other is σκοπός (skopós), a noun for "watcher". So I can see how they'd get scope (verb) = vision and scope (noun) = visor
Unfortunately the Latin word that we get vision from means "eyesight", which neither sense of scope works for. I think the appropriate old Greek word is ὅρᾱσῐς (hórāsĭs), so maybe remotorasis would be a better guess for "television" on this post
(disclaimer, I'm not a linguist and also don't really know anything about Latin or Ancient Greek, I might be wrong)
It could also be that they chose "remotoscope" over "remotorasis" intentionally because the former is such a fun word.
"scope" also fits in with how we already use that word, e.g. microscope/telescope/periscope.
I'd wager most (non-indian, because i'd assume they don't use the latin/greek parts of english as much) english speakers could figure out what "remotoscope" means even completely devoid of context.
It's definitely the more fun option
I imagine it has to do with verb conjugation