Pahoran wrote:
It's like this:
Anti = "opposed to."
Mormon = "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."
Hence an anti-Mormon is anyone who is opposed to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
What is it with lawyers who try to ply their trade to apologetics and becoming some of the most ineffectual dilettantes on the scene? In any case, Pahoran is correctly parroting the FAIR Wiki here:
FAIRWiki wrote:It is somewhat strange that critics of the Church wish to somehow divest the term "anti-Mormon" of its clear meaning. It is composed of two elements:
1) the prefix anti-
Noun: "A person who is opposed to something, such as a group, policy, proposal, or practice"
Adjective: Opposed
Preposition: Opposed to; against.
2) ...and Mormon, as a colloquial term for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
But the slow witted kiwi and the FAIRWiki have fallen into anold fallacious mistake that the etymology of a word is a factor at all as to the meaning behind it’s use. For a good counter example to this poor thinking would be running a similar analysis on the English word ‘television’. The prefix means “far” and the suffix means “sight”, but no one in the English speaking world understands the word ‘television’ to literally mean “far sight”.
Etymology is used to understand the origins of a given word, it doesn’t give any insight into contemporary meaning. I don’t get how a bunch of adults who act so sensitive to context can’t stop form making basic errors in plain reasoning by ignoring how language is really used.
Critics complain about the use of “Anti-Mormon” because they feel groups like FAIR use it as a code word to dissuade people from even considering a source, poisoning the well as it were, pointing out the etymology of a word doesn’t explain anything.