I disagree that most native English speakers would be able to give you a reasonable definition of 'transduce', let alone 'educe'. I love Clojure, but I find the naming cult a bit absurd from time to time. I suspect that most Clojure programmers just learn them as abstract words, much as a non-native speaker would and as the OP describes.
It'd be easier for a native speaker to attach a somewhat correct meaning to transduce because of familiarity with words like translate, transfer, transform, induce, reduce and deduce.
So while most people couldn't define them, they are familiar with both parts of the word and that would make it easier to remember and to understand in when seen in its context.
at least part of what i was getting at is that this statement is true not only for English, but also for French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.
while it's less true for Russian, it's true to some extent because Russian and greek share many roots, especially for technical language, and loan-words are prominent features of the language.
It'd be easier for a native speaker to attach a somewhat correct meaning to transduce because of familiarity with words like translate, transfer, transform, induce, reduce and deduce.
