Reanalysis

[stoutfellow]

A current article in Atlantic contains the following: "[T]he FSB has built an empire in the same way, making minigarchs out of rank-and-file FSB officers whose salaries don’t square with the posh lifestyles they lead." I draw your attention to the coinage "minigarch", presumably a portmanteau of "mini" and "oligarch".

Of course, that's a bastardization reanalysis of "oligarch"; an oligarchy is a state in which there are many few [1] ("oligo") powerful people ("archon"). [I am no doubt messing up the precise Greek, but the roots are common enough...] Evidently the "g" has been reinterpreted as being part of the second morpheme rather than the first. (Compare, in English, "a nadder" > "an adder", or "helicopter", originally "helico-pter" ("helix-wing"), being interpreted as "heli-copter" > "copter".)

Just an oddity....

[1] Thanks to ndrosen for catching my error on this one.

Comments

[ndrosen]

I don't speak Ancient Greek, but I am pretty confident that "oligo" means few, and an oligarchy is a state that is ruled by few people.

Chemists talk about oligomers and oligosaccharides, which are smaller chains than other polymers and polysaccharides.

[stoutfellow]

You're right, of course. Somehow I was stuck on "one"/"many", and "few" just didn't come to mind.