Well, we've had this discussion before. It leads nowhere.
Bill Farmer stands here as a prescriptivist (and of course he is perfectly entitled and qualified to do so). It all amounts to whether you choose to consider the matter from a descriptive or prescriptive point of view. For example, for an adept of descriptive linguistics,
homo, in
homophobia, is actually the result of the process we call back-clipping (or apocope) and
stands for
homosexual. This is the way thousands of words have been coined in most indo-european languages recently (we use
homophobie in French) and this is the way it is understood by most people. However, from a prescriptive viewpoint, this is wrong, this should not be, we shouldn't be talking that way and descriptive linguists should not encourage us to do so because this is the “lazy wayâ€, it is highly misleading, confusing, illogical, etc.
It is true that, for example, in the 1960's, according to the OED, the word
homophile was apparently meant to mean: “A term for a homosexual (regarded as a person belonging to a particular social group rather than as someone who is sexually abnormal)â€. This word was indeed coined “according to the book†from a prescriptive viewpoint. But if you ask someone now, this word will surely be understood as “someone who likes homosexuals, without necessarily being oneâ€, just because the apocope
homo- is now of a much wider use. Facts are stubborn.
See this thread for more details : [
www.eldritchdark.com]