Re: "In spite of"

It. "nonobstante" calls to mind the English alternative
"notwithstanding", which also offers some semantic goodness.



On 8/4/08, J. 'Mach' Wust <j_mach_wust@...> wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Aug 2008 12:32:45 +0200, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
> wrote:
>
>>Jim Henry writes:
> ...
>>> In trying to come up with a way to render the meaning of English
>>> "despite" / "in spite of", Esperanto "malgraux", French "malgré", the
>>> best
>>> thing I've managed to think of so far is to coin a root word
>>> {m&#301;l} from which the postposition {m&#301;l-i}, "in spite of" is
>>> derived;
>>> however -- this is the unsatisfactory part -- the only gloss I have
>>> for the root word {m&#301;l} itself is "in-spite-of-ness".
>>>...
>>
>>German has 'trotz' + GEN, where used as a noun, 'Trotz' means
>>'defiance'.  So that might be what you're looking for.
>
> The Grimms' wordbook surprisingly links the prepositional use to an older
> interjectional use, and by the way points out that the dative is more
> original than the genitive:
>
> http://germazope.uni-trier.de/Projects/WBB/woerterbuecher/dwb/cdrom/wbgui?word=trotz&lemid=GT11531
>
> But why go for other languages when English "despite" also offers a
> semantics, something along the line of 'in contempt of'.
>
> --
> grüess
> mach
>
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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>