Ped (1)

The other day I came across the word “pedagogy”, which means “the practice of teaching”. The “ped” part comes from the Ancient Greek word “παῖς” which means “child”.¹ The “agog” part means “lead”, so pedagogy can be interpreted as “the practice of leading children”.

Other words related to “learning” that contain “ped” are “pedant” and “encyclopedia”. A pedant is someone who excessively reveres academic learning or someone who is excessively concerned with accuracy. Encyclopedia partly comes from this origin as well.

Misopedist does not seem to be a common English word, but if you know the word misogyny, you can guess what it means. Since misogyny basically means hatred for women, you can assume that the prefix “miso-“ means hatred. (Well, in order to do this, you may also need to know about “gyny”, which can be found in words like gynecologist, a doctor who specializes in women’s reproductive health.) Misopedist means someone who hates children.