Prefix of the day:
ULTRA-
From Latin, meaning "beyond".
A slight clarification might here be warranted: Thanks to the omnipresence of catch-phrase marketing, poor little ULTRA- has become quite the misunderstood morpheme. So many products are dubbed "ULTRA-Sweeper" or "Super-duper-ULTRA-magic-Coffee-Machine" that ULTRA- is now understood to mean "amazing", "awesome", or "the bestest". I'll leave it up to you to decide whether or not you'll use ULTRA- as millions of marketers do, but know that etymologically, the word actually means beyond.
ULTRAviolet: beyond violet; the region of the electromagnetic spectrum that is of higher frequency than violet light.
ULTRAsonic: sound waves that are outside of (or beyond) the range of human hearing.
ULTRAmontane: beyond the mountains.
Mnemonic:
A mnemonic for ultra-? Well that's beyond me.
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I want a super-duper-BEYOND-magic-Coffee-Machine. That's so much better than the ultra-magic one I bought last week. Some product marketers are just unwilling to take that extra step.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I hope I never grow up to be a language-murdering marketer.