Abstract

Of course it is not a word, this “dediction”; at least, not yet. But why not? As the story goes, James Joyce was once asked whether his habit of inventing words was because there were not enough words in the English language. He answered that there were enough words, just not the right words. To see whether “dediction” might be a “right word”, I begin by considering related terms, and then consider what they do for us—why do they exist and my new term, “dediction”, does not? For example, if we construct for ourselves a simple list of Latinate roots related to writing and seeing, and then add time-related prefixes, we could quickly come up with “post-script”, “describe”, “description,” “prescribe”, and “prescription”, among others. (“Depict” and “depiction” come to mind as well, but their treatment is beyond my scope here.) If we then do the same for speaking, we have no trouble recognising “predict” and “prediction”, but what about “postdict” and “postdiction” or “dedict” and “dediction”?