Talk:planeteer
did this exist in the modern sense before Captain Planet?
[edit]Im not sure if this link will work, but Google gives me plenty of hits for the word planeteer before the debut of the kids' show, but none of them seem to refer to the modern sense of someone who works to protect nature on planet Earth. The pre-1991 hits might be using a variety of senses, and some are impossible to tell out of context, but I get the impression that many or most of them are using the word in the sense of someone who travels from one planet to another, perhaps no different than a spacer, but many authors may have felt that planeteer was a more interesting word. Its etymology might be a blend of planet + privateer or it might just be planet + -eer. If it was coined many times independently by different authors we can't really pin down a single etymology anyway.
As for Captain Planet ... if the modern environmentalist sense actually comes from the TV show, can we really say its etymology is a blend of planet + volunteer? That show, as I remember it, was a standout example of the common child-superhero trope where adults range from unhelpful to outright hostile (except Capt Planet himself), and the kids were pretty much pushed around everywhere they went. In other words, they were not volunteers. I would have to say that we're only guessing at the etymology here and that it might be best to just say it's planet + -eer. —Soap— 11:16, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
- Ive mentioned the more straightforward -eer etymology now. I think those using the term today would be most happy to say it comes from a blend of planet and volunteer so that they would not be likening themselves to superhero kids whose adventures can't actually happen, but that we can't back-date that etymology to the kids' show itself, and that the earlier science fiction use almost certainly was not based on that etymology since it fits the pattern of words like privateer. —Soap— 07:43, 16 September 2023 (UTC)