What is the morphology of the word nemoricole? I added this word to my list of words to study upon encountering nemoricole as a related word to corticolous, which I discovered while investigating the bound base <Cort> denoting “bark, shell, outer covering.” I love falling down word study rabbit holes!
The word corticolous means “living or growing on bark.” Based on my knowledge of English morphology, I hypothesized the following word sum:
<Cort + i + Cole + ous → corticolous>
I knew that the <i> is a connecting vowel and the -ous is an adjective suffix. I was unsure of the remaining <Cole> but had a memory of encountering this morpheme before. Upon searching the Morphodex, I remembered that English has multiple <Cole> bases, but the <Cole> denoting “inhabit” from Latin colere is the <Cole> in corticolous. Other words with the same base include calcicole, fungicolous, humicolous, lapidocolous, latebricole, nidicolous, paludicole, petricolous, ripicolous, terricole, and xerocole.
Knowing the base <Cole> denoting “inhabit,” I returned to the word nemoricole. I hypothesized the following word sum:
<Nemore + i + Cole → nemoricole>
I know that the collecting vowel <i> almost always precedes this <Cole> base. I was thus left with the <nemore>, which I supposed was a base. Looking up nemoricole on Wiktionary and Merriam Webster, I learned that the word means “living in groves,” which provided additional evidence for the <Cole> denoting “inhabit” base.
Both sources also told me that the first part of the word comes from Latin nemor-, nemus. Latin nemus is the nominative form of the noun meaning “grove, glade, pasture.” Latin nemoris is the genitive form of the word.
Often times English borrowed bases from the nominative and genitive forms of a Latin noun. The <Cort> in corticolous is another example, which came from the nominative Latin cortex. The genitive form is corticis, which gave English the bound base <Cortic(e)>, the base of words such as cortical and corticoid.
Thus, the <nemor> in nemoricole is the base <Nemore> from Latin nemoris denoting “grove, glade, pasture.” I included the replaceable <e> initially to keep the <r> from doubling. The connecting vowel <i> would replace the <e> but not cause doubling, but I needed to search for other relatives with the same base to confirm the need for the replaceable <e>.
Looking at the Wiktionary entry for nemoricole, I found the relatives nemoricoline and nemoricolous. I then looked at the Derived terms section of the Wiktionary entry for nemus and found nemorālis, nemorēnsis, and nemorōsus. The entry for nemorālis gave me the English descendant nemoral, which supported the inclusion of the replaceable <e>. The vowel-initial -al suffix would replace the <e> but otherwise cause doubling.
<Nemore + al → nemoral>
The entry for nemoral also gave me the word nemorous, which I also found in the entry for Latin nemorōsus. Latin nemorēnsis did not list any English descendants.
Typing <nemor> into the search bar on Wiktionary did lead me to another relative: nemorose.
To summarize, the word nemoricole consists of the bound base <Nemore> denoting “grove, glade, pasture”, the connecting vowel <i>, and the bound base <Cole> denoting “inhabit.” Relatives through the <Nemore> base include nemoricoline, nemoricolous, nemoral, nemorous, and nemorose, and relative through the <Cole> base include nemoricoline, nemoricolous, calcicole, corticole, fungicolous, humicolous, lapidocolous, latebricole, nidicolous, paludicole, petricolous, ripicolous, terricole, and xerocole.
