Re: Incorrect use of "it's" in package control files -- file mass bug?

[Thomas Bushnell BSG <tb@becket.net>]

Oliver Elphick <olly@lfix.co.uk> writes:

> Umm...more Latin knowledge required here!  It's spelt "prevalence" --
> from Latin praevalens :-)

Well, according to the OED... :)

It's from French "prévalence", from medieval Latin "praevalentia",
from "praevalere", without going through the participle first.

Most English "-ence" nouns come from the Latin "-entia" nouns, which
are directly formed from the verbal stem, not from the participle. :)

The history is a little confusing actually, because whether you get
-ence or -ance is not predictable from the Latin root alone, and the
stem vowels change sometimes.  

The OED article on the -ence suffix reads:
  
  a. Fr. -ence, ad. L. -entia, forming abstr. ns., usually of quality,
  rarely of action, on ppl. stems in -ent-, e.g. sapient-em knowing,
  sapient-ia knowingness, sapience; audient-em hearing, audient-ia the
  process of hearing, audience. As the ppl. stem had -ent-, -ant-, the
  derivative ns. had -entia (pr{umac}dentia), -antia ({imac}nfantia);
  but all these were levelled in OFr. to -ance, in words that survived
  in popular use, or were formed analogically on the pr. pple. in
  -ant; as aidance, assistance, complaisance, contenance, nuisance,
  parlance, séance. These were ns. of action or process, the value
  with which the suffix was retained in Fr. as a living formative. But
  subsequently other L. words in -ntia, which had not survived in the
  living language, were readopted on the analogy of these, but with
  -ence or -ance according to the L. vowel, e.g. absence, clémence,
  diligence, élégance, présence, providence, prudence, tempérance,
  violence. These were ns. of quality or state; all Fr. words in -ence
  are of this class. Both classes were adodpted in ME. in their actual
  Fr. forms and senses, which they generally still retain; but since
  1500, some of those in -ance have been altered back to -ence after
  L. All words since adopted from or formed on L., follow L. precedent
  as to -ence or -ance. The result is that the modern spelling of
  individual words, and still more of groups of cogn. words, is
  uncertain and discordant; cf. assistance, consistence, existence,
  resistance, subsistence; attendance, superintendence; ascendant,
  -ent, -ancy, -ency, condescendence; dependant, -ent, -ance, -ence,
  independence; appearance, apparent; pertinence, appurtenance. In
  sense, words in -nce are partly nouns of action, as in OFr., partly
  of state or quality, as in L. The latter idea is more distinctly
  expressed by the variant -ncy (see -Y = -ie:{em}-ia) which has been
  formed in Eng. as a direct adaptation of L. -ntia; see -ENCY, -ANCY.

Thomas