Does "ruptcy" have a meaning? As in bank_ruptcy. I can google translate it to other languages and it makes sense but no online dictionary has it. Feels weird to have an ending for one specific word that in itself would mean nothing?
4
-
3"Rupt" as in rupture, corrupt, disrupt, erupt, abrupt...– Digital ChrisSep 24, 2014 at 15:22
-
2Rupt ultimately comes from the Latin for "break."– CaseySep 24, 2014 at 21:45
-
1According to the dictionary on my computer, "bankruptcy" is the only word ending in "ruptcy."– SnowballSep 25, 2014 at 2:43
-
1If a disagreement breaks out among Conspirators, it is a conspiruptcy.– user126158Jul 28, 2016 at 16:19
Add a comment
|
4 Answers
Actually, the ending there is -cy, which is seen in such nouns as captaincy, idiocy, accuracy. It's a suffix ultimately derived from Greek, through Latin (etymonline.com), yielding an abstract noun from an adjective or another noun; the abstraction moves from an adjective or noun to the state of being, or the position or classification, described by the adjective or noun (if something is accurate, it possesses accuracy; if someone is an idiot, they display idiocy; if they're a captain, they possess a captaincy).
The other morpheme, or word part, you identify is -rupt, which comes ultimately from the Latin rumpere, "break". You see this in words like erupt.
Thus -ruptcy is not really an ending, but a concatenation of a morpheme and a common ending.
answered Sep 23, 2014 at 20:12
-
1
-
5Had never thought of bankrupt as "ruptured (broken) bank" idioms.thefreedictionary.com/break+the+bank Sep 24, 2014 at 9:55
-
3Indeed, when one is out of money one is broke - earlier, broken (Latin ruptus) was used in the same sense. Sep 24, 2014 at 17:15
-
1
-
No, it is unlikely you will find ruptcy as a word in English. And that is because even in bankruptcy, it does not represent a word.
If we look at etymonline we see the origin of bankrupt:
1560s, from Italian banca rotta, literally "a broken bench," from banca "moneylender's shop," literally "bench" (see bank (n.1)) + rotta "broken, defeated, interrupted" from (and remodeled on) Latin rupta, fem. past participle of rumpere "to break" (see rupture (n.)). "[S]o called from the habit of breaking the bench of bankrupts" [Klein]. Earlier in English as a noun, "bankrupt person" (1530s).
So the rupt there roughly corresponds to broken.
etymonline further tells us about bankruptcy:
1700, from bankrupt, "probably on the analogy of insolvency, but with -t erroneously retained in spelling, instead of being merged in the suffix ...." [OED]. Figurative use from 1761.
So ruptcy is a bit misformed to look like solvency.
answered Sep 23, 2014 at 20:10
If you look in a good dictionary (or Wikipedia, or websearch for "define bankrupt etymology"), you will find that the word derives from the Italian "banca rotta", meaning "broken bench."
Not all morphemes are directly related to English words.
(I was going to assign homework to determine whether "rotta" -- or a related Latinate word -- was also the source of the English word "rupture". But Matt has already answered that.)
According to Etymonline the t was erroneously retained:
- 1700, from bankrupt, "probably on the analogy of insolvency, but with -t erroneously retained in spelling, instead of being merged in the suffix ...." [OED]. Figurative use from 1761.
The suffix is:
- abstract noun suffix of quality or rank, from Latin -cia, -tia, from Greek -kia, -tia, from abstract ending -ia + stem ending -c- or -t-. The native correspondents are -ship, -hood.
