Crowned

Tonight I had occasion in my studies to think about the Greek word stephanos. This word is often translated 'crown' in English, which has always seemed an iffy gloss to me. Historically and etymologically, the word means something more like 'wreath of glory', 'encompassing field effect' or some such.

Thus, when koinë texts use the word 'crown' in translation, it's good to bear in mind that it can idiomatically mean 'reward', 'aura', and many other concepts to do with something bestowed as a visible sign of acclaim and/or approval. And that should crown this short post.

Sarcophagus

A sarcophagus is something which 'eats the flesh'; the word sarx in Greek means 'flesh'. This came out of a random thought I had as I looked at a picture of the pyramids and thought of the great age of those mighty monuments.

And then I remembered the Greek word anaimosarke. This word means 'flesh without blood', or alternatively, 'not of flesh and blood'. It is used in an ancient poem about the cicada, a merry fellow which seems to be anaimosarke.

And I remembered further. I remembered a post from seven years ago. In that long-ago silence, something stirred. I remember an inquisition, and someone telling me that this post was about somebody else. I remember thinking, "This is nonsense, my post is about Superman and Batman!"

The problem in this post-modern age is that it's not about what you intended when you wrote something, but what people think you intended, what people can twist your writing to mean, and what people can say you have influenced other people to write. Whether you did any of it is immaterial. It's the Macavity Syndrome. And when that strikes, it is as good as eating your flesh and everything else in it.

This isn't to excuse anything ill-considered in my own writing. I have written things that I have been sorry for afterwards. And honestly, deeply so. But I am a little upset to be blamed for things I did not write.

Yet, there are still things that abide. Faith, hope and love, for example.

Subjects Cambridge Does Not Want You To Take (Part II): Things Man Was Not Meant To Know

It's always fascinating to delve into the encyclopaedic tomes which form 'core' or 'accessory' rulebooks in role-playing games and RPG systems. You learn about all kinds of things that your character can develop awareness, knowledge, skill, proficiency, talent or manifestation of and in. The lists come, literally, to thousands of these things, if not myriads. Some of these things are real, and I have relatives and friends who actually have some proficiency in them.

Here are a few you have to be careful with.

1. Orchidology: This would seem obvious. It has to be the study of orchids, right? Well... it turns out that the Greek orchis means 'testicle'. If I offer you an orchidectomy, it is not an offer to prune your Vandas. An orchidologist studies orchids, and not testicles; an orchidomaniac studies testicles, and not orchids. Go figure.

2. Inductive Divination: This one's not so obvious. It's actually the practice of making many observations and then recording the consequent events following those observations. A pattern that develops is then applied in forecasting. This is the way a lot of predictive sciences (e.g. broadcast meteorology – weather services and petrochemical assessment) work.

3. Necrophilology: No, this has nothing to do with the science of necrophilia. It's the study of dead languages. Somewhat unfortunately, it can be translated in a few ways depending on how you break it up. The three Greek elements here are nekron ('corpse'), philia ('liking') and logos ('structure, language, word, words').

4. Demonoology: Yes, this one is spelt coorectly correctly. The Greek nous means 'mind', 'noology' is the study of the phenomenon of mind. Greek demos means 'the people (of a state, for example)' and hence 'demonoology' means 'the study of the collective mind of a population'. That extra 'o' in the middle, very important.

5. Demonoology: Yep, here we go again... 'oology' is the study of eggs. I'm not kidding. The Greek daimon(ion) means 'a spirit (manifesting personally and locally)'. So this particular formulation means 'a study of the physical origins of spiritual things'. The problem, of course, is distinguishing between the two; careful pronunciation required.

After five such helpings, perhaps it's good to take a break. As I dig around, I begin to realise that there are ways of saying things in Greek that cannot be said exactly in English. In fact, there are some things best said in Tibetan.

Word of the Day: Autodidactic

Heh, this word causes conniptions in the minds of many. For a start, it resembles too much a sort of rhyme-scheme gone berserk: in its twelve letters it does 'a'-'t' twice, with a 'd'-'i'-'d' and a 'c'-'i'-'c' thrown in for good measure. Only the 'u' and the 'o' are not repeated.

But apart from its odd structure, autodidactic is a perfectly good Greek word. It comes from auto-, 'self-directed', 'oneself', or 'on one's own'; and didaskein, which means 'to teach'. Autodidactic, then, simply means 'self-taught', 'self-teaching' or 'able to teach oneself'.

In this particular sense, it applies to me; all the Greek you've seen in my blog is self-taught. I am an autodidact when it comes to most languages, but I would certainly benefit from having formal instruction from a teacher, or informal education from a fellow-sufferer.

Big Words

There are some large words in our vocabulary: colossal, titanic, gigantic, tremendous, huge, enormous, vast, immense; the interesting thing, I realise, is that most people cannot differentiate between them. It would be an excellent test to see whether a candidate could create a sentence in which one word would work while another could not.

So what are the differences between these words?

Colossal: From Greek kolossos, first found in Herodotos and used to describe the large Egyptian statues found in temples and as statuary guardians. The Colossus of Rhodes was the 33-metre tall statue of Helios the sun-god which stood near the harbour from which Rhodes derived its income and which was its only defensive weakness. From the mid-18th century, colossal was used to denote something unimaginably vast (in terms of space and size) but not necessarily of human aspect, as had previously been the case.

Titanic: From Greek titan, 'one who strains mightily'; the male plural is titanes and the female plural titanides. They were the youngest (and thus most human-looking) of the children of Heaven (Ouranos) and Earth (Gaia). To call something titanic is to evoke the sense of godlike struggle and use of physical power and energy.

For those who want to know, their names were Ókeanos ('Ocean'), Téthys ('Divine Sea'), Hüperion ('Excellence'), Théia ('Divine Light'), Koios ('Intelligence'), Mnemosüné ('Memory'), Krios ('Horned One' - he seems to have been male lunar power), Phoibé ('Brightness'), Iapetus ('Spearcaster' or 'Piercing One'), Themis ('Natural Justice'), Kronos ('Time Passing'), and Rhea ('Fertile Ground').

Gigantic: From Greek gigas ('enormous one'), one of a member of the monstrous cousins of the gods, the Gigantes. The word carries with it the sense of abnormal size, deformed largeness and brute strength. Some of the Gigantes had multiple limbs and extraordinary senses; Argus was said to have a thousand eyes and the Hekatoncheires had a hundred hands and fifty heads each.

Tremendous: From Latin tremens; literally 'causing one to shake'. Originally had the sense of 'terrifying' or 'awesome'. Now, it just means 'very good, and I'm happy for you'.

Huge: From some distant Indo-European root (see, for example, Old French ahuge), meaning 'very large in scale or stature'. Describes physical size.

Enormous: From Latin e- + -normis; implies something that is beyond the ordinary and completely abnormal. The sense of 'outside nature' (perhaps outrageously so) can be seen in the related word 'enormity'.

Vast: From Latin vastus, 'wasteland'. The words 'vast' and 'waste' are originally the same. 'Vast' denotes an empty space, a void or other featureless expanse. 'Vast knowledge' would mean something like 'a lot of information, within which individual facts are of negligible importance', I suppose.

Immense: From Latin meaning 'not measurable' (cf. 'mensuration', 'commensurate'). The idea is that of something so big that it is beyond conventional measurement.

Some day when you have to describe something beyond normal experience, take a few moments. Think about the kind of excess you are experiencing. And pick the right word to describe it.

Parallels

The word 'parallel' is Greek in origin, from 'para-', which means 'beside and distinct'; and 'allo-' which means 'in like manner or positional relationship'. A parallel, then, is something that is not the same as, but virtually equivalent to, that to which it is parallel. Greek prepositions are many and varied, but combining two in one word always leads to interesting vocabulary.

Here are snippets from a parallel universe, upon a summit one might vaguely have thought of as somewhat Olympian.

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"There is," said the elder statesman (now retired), "an institution that prides itself on putting up eagles in every courtyard, that puts its principles on display and violates them with impunity, that sets up a condition in which rule of law maintains order, but in which the law is an instrument constructed and administered by those intent on maintaining power and control.

"For where we speak of conflict, the word which our first speaker omitted must also be mentioned - and that word is power. It is a sad fact of our non-ideal world that many institutions perpetuate the power of those who no longer possess the right to power, the will to power, or the fact of power. These are old powers, no longer relevant to the modern world. What they have left is positional power, entrenched by decree, and they hang on to it ruthlessly.

"I am not speaking of the Roman Empire, although this might have applied equally to them."

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"It is a small entity," said the minister, "With the good fortune not to have any resources of note, except the will, mind and ability to sweat. I say 'good fortune', because human nature is such that if it had any resources to exploit, those in power would have wanted to attain positions of power to dip their hands into its cookie jar, or to rule and subjugate it.

"But it is a realistic entity. It functions on three principles: 1) that the world is not an ideal place (although it is a place for idealists); 2) that it can be of help to many and thus cement a place for itself; 3) that it can achieve far more than its resources seem to allow, by ingenuity, wit, patience, determination, and good humour.

"It cannot lead the world or drive global culture or revolution. But it can survive, thrive, and act as a model that others can see and be inspired by."

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Parallels are funny things. Sometimes, we see as through a glass darkly; sometimes, as face to face. (This is called optical dichroism.) Sometimes, we see with blinding sight, that happiness is not an affliction and sobriety not always a virtue. And sometimes, we are enlightened in all humility, and we reflect that the world is indeed a better place for people who can laugh at themselves.

The Greek For 'World' Is Κόσμος

I am setting my home page to this for a while, after resisting it for a long time. It reminds me of the most beautiful readable language that exists. This language is Greek to me.

Lexically, the Greek language is one of the most important to an English-speaker. It's probably true that most of the academic disciplines we see in the school curriculum have Greek names - biology, physics, geography, history, music, economics, technology, mathematics, philosophy. I have some limited competency in Greek - my friend the classicist is the man you want when asking for more.

But limited or not, I intend to make use of my competence in weird and wonderful ways. Εν αρχη ην ο Λογος, indeed.

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Edit: Then again, after finding this, I might change my home page again. There aren't many things more satirical and yet comforting than this.