Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 April 9

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April 9

This language construct, name for

In book indexes and similar contexts, related topics are grouped while preserving alphabetical order, by inverting the word order: "History of time" would become "Time, history of", so that it appears near "Time" and "Time, units of". Is there a name for this specific construct? It seems like it would be a type of inversion but that article doesn't mention it. ℰmi1y_⧼T·C⧽ 21:34, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I would say that it is part of a special-purpose version of written English, and therefore at two removes from the English language. So, while lexicographers may have a name for it (I don't know), it is not a "language construct". Our article Alphabetical order does not mention a name for the process. ColinFine (talk) 21:43, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

The purpose of writing it that way is to put the most important word first. (For example, in an index, different entries with the same important word will then be grouped together.) I googled on the search terms alphabetization "important word first" and two of the first hits were this Harvard University guideline and this longer discussion of indexing, both of which refer to inversion to put the most important word first, but don't use any shorter term to refer to it. --174.89.12.187 (talk) 22:01, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

It is usually called inversion by indexers (just as the "surname, forename" treatment of personal names is). See section 18.8 in this chapter from The Chicago Manual of Style: "A noun phrase is sometimes inverted to allow the keyword—the word a reader is most likely to look under—to appear first." Obviously different from the kind of inversion treated in Inversion (linguistics), though. Deor (talk) 22:11, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Our disambiguation page keyword gives us Index term. DuncanHill (talk) 23:54, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Hysteron proteron. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:38, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

In the first half of the 20th century, British military supply lists were notorious for using a syntax such as "Cups, officers, for the use of"... AnonMoos (talk) 19:38, 10 April 2023 (UTC)