Category: Greek (ελληνικά)

Market places

By Simon

Last week the origins of the word agora came up in conversation and I thought I’d find out more.

An agora was a place of gathering or marketplace in Ancient Greece. It comes from the Ancient Greek ἀγείρω [ageirō] (I gather, collect), from the Proto-Indo-European *ger- (to assemble, gather together), which is the root of the English words gregarious, aggregate, congregate, egregious, segregate, allegory, category, and panegyric, via the Latin gregārius (of the herd, common), which comes from grex (herd, flock).

In Romance languages, such as Aragonese, Asuturian, Galician, Ladino, Mirandese and Portuguese, the word agora is also found, but it means ‘now’ and comes from the Latin expression hāc hōra (‘this hour’). The Spanish word ahora (now) comes from the same root. hōra comes from the Ancient Greek ὥρα [hōra] (time, season, year), from the Proto-Indo-European *yōr-ā, a suffixed form of *yēr/*yeh₁r- (year, season), which is the root of the English word year, and the words for year in many other Indo-European languages.

Source: Wiktionary

The friend who asked about agora wondered whether the Welsh word agor (open) might come from the same root. I haven’t been able to find any information about this. Does anybody know?

Sun dogs, billygoat’s eyes and halos

By Simon

A photo of a sun dogs or parhelion by the sun - from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fargo_Sundogs_2_18_09.jpg

The other day I discovered the wonderful word sun dog, which refers to coloured patches of light that appear beside the sun at certain times, particularly when the sun is low in the sky. The scientific name for this phenomenon is a parhelion, from the παρήλιον (parēlion – beside the sun); from παρά (para – beside), and ἥλιος (helios – sun) [source].

In French sun dogs are known as parhélie, faux soleil (“fake sun”), soleil double (“double sun”), œil de bouc (“billygoat’s eye) or chien du soleil (“sun dog). In other languages their names are mainly based on the Greek, or some variation on fake sun.

There are also such things as moon dogs, mock moons or paraselenes, which are patches of light that appear beside the moon, though they are rarer than sun dogs, difficult to see, and only appear when the moon is very bright and full or nearly full. [source].

The friend who told me about sun dogs was using it to describe a halo around the moon or lunar halo, which, like sun and moon dogs, is a result of the refraction of light through ice crystal in cirrostratus clouds high in the upper troposphere [source]. On the night when we were talking about sun dogs the moon was only half full, so I don’t think there were any moon dogs about, but there definitely was a halo around the moon.

Knowledge and seeing

By Simon

I discovered today that there is a connection between the Gaelic word for knowledge, information, news – fios in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, fys in Manx – and the English words video and wit.

Their roots can all be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European root woid-/wid- (to see/to know), which, according to the OED, is also the root of words such as the Sanskrit वेदा (veda – knowledge); the Latin vidēre to see); the Welsh gwybod (to know); the Lithuanian véidas (face); and the Greek ἰνδάλλεσθαι (to appear).

The Irish and Scottish Gaelic word fios is also related to the word fionn (white, fair, pale; sincere, true, certain; small; fine, pleasant), which is how I discovered this while putting together a new page of Scottish Gaelic colours – you can see how easily I get distracted. This doesn’t worry me as it’s all very interesting.

Water lilies, nymphs and blue lotuses

By Simon

A nymphaea / water lily

There was talk of ponds and water lilies last night at the French conversation group and I discovered that one French word for water lily is nymphéa [nɛ̃.fe.a], which comes from nymphaea the Latin name for this genus of plants. The Latin word comes from the Ancient Greek word νύμφη (nymphe), which means girl, and also refers to a low ranking female deity who haunts rivers, springs, forests and other places [source].

Nymphéa refers specifially to the white water lily, or nymphaea alba, which also known as the European White Waterlily, White Lotus, or Nenuphar, a name that is also found in French: nénuphar [ne.ny.faʁ], and which comes via the Persian نيلوفر (ninufar) or the Arabic نلوفر (nilufar), from the Sanskrit नीलोतपल (nīlotpala – blue lotus), from नील (nīla – blue-black) and उतपल (utpala – lotus) [source].

Many names for plants in French come directly from Latin, whereas in English many plants have common names and Latin names. In other languages do plants have both common and Latin-derived names, or just one or the other?

It’s very sticky

By Simon

Major Walter Clopton Wingfield

I discovered (via Inky Fool) an alternative word for tennis today – sphairistike [sfɛəˈrɪstɪkɪ], which sounds a bit like the phrase ‘it’s very sticky’. This was the name coined by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield (pictured right), who invented (lawn) tennis in 1873, and it comes from the Greek σϕαιριστική (sfairistiké), or ‘(skill) in playing at ball’ or ‘sphere-tech’.

Before then the word tennis, which comes from the French word tenez (hold), referred to a game played in an enclosed court – a game now known as Real Tennis.

Strangely the word sphairistike never really caught on, and everyone began referring to the game a tennis or lawn tennis.

A related word is sphairistic (adj) = tennis playing.

Do you know of any other obscure or obsolete terms for popular sports?

Archerien

By Simon

An interesting word that came up in my Breton lesson today is archerien, which means police. It caught my attention because it has no obvious connection to the word police, and because it is completely different to the equivalent words in other Celtic languages:

– Welsh: heddlu (“peace force”)
– Cornish: kreslu (“peace host”)
– Irish: gardaí (síochána) (“guards of peace”); póilíní
– Manx: meoiryn shee (“peace keepers/stewards”); poleenyn
– Scottish Gaelic: poileas

The English word police comes from the French police (public order, administration, government), from the Latin polītīa (state, government), from the Greek πολιτεία (politeia – citizenship, government, administration, constitution). It is shares the same root as policy, politics, politician and various other words [source].

Many languages use variants on the word police, e.g. Politsei (Estonian), პოლიცია (polits’ia – Georgian), Polizei (German), पुलिस (pulis – Hindi), پلیس (pulis – Persian), Booliis (Somalia), Policía (Spanish), Pulis (Tagalog), but some do their own thing:

– Bavarian: Kibara
– Chinese: 警察 (jǐngchá); 公安 (gōng’ān)
– Faroese: Løgregla
– Greek: Αστυνομία (Astynomía)
– Hungarian: Rendőrség
– Icelandic: Lögregla
– Japanese: 警察 (keisatsu)
– Korean: 警察 (gyeongchal)
– Thai: ตำรวจ (tảrwc)

Are there other examples of languages with a word unrelated to police for police?

Apocope

By Simon

I learned a new word today – apocope [əˈpɒkəpiː], which is the loss of phonemes from the ends of words, particularly unstressed vowels.

It comes from the Greek word ἀποκόπτω (apokoptein), which means ‘cutting off’ and comes from ἀπό (apo-), ‘away’ and κόπτω (koptein), ‘to cut’.

Apocope is a mechanism which erodes some inflections and other word endings, and creates new ones, when words that were once separate become bound together. It also refers to the process of abbreviating words by dropping their endings.

Here are some examples:
– pānis (Latin for bread) > pan(em) (Vulgar Latin)> pan (Spanish), pane (Italian), pain (French), paõ (Portuguese)
– advertisement > advert > ad
– photographh > photo
– credibility > cred
– barbecue > barbie
– fanatic > fan

The term for phonemes being dropped from the beginning of a word is apheresis (/əˈfɛrɨsɪs/), Here are some examples:

– esquire > squire
– knife (/ˈknaɪf/) > /ˈnaɪf/ – the k was pronounced in Middle English
– telephone > phone
– ysbwriel > sbwriel (Welsh for rubbish, litter)
– ysgrifennu > sgrifennu (Welsh for to write), which has become sgwennu in some dialects of Welsh.

When a word loses internal phonemes, the process is known as syncope (/ˈsɪŋkəpiː/). Examples include:

– forecastle > fo’c’s’le
– never > n’er (poetic)
– over > o’er (poetic)

Source: Wikipedia, World Wide Words and About.com

Cellar door words

By Simon

The term cellar door has, according to J. R. R. Tolkien and a number of other writers, a particularly pleasing sound, even though its meaning isn’t anything special. An article in the New York Times discusses the origins of this idea, an example of phonaesthetics*, and cites a 1903 novel by Cyrus Lauron Hooper, Gee-Boy, as the first mention in writing of the aesthetic properties of cellar door. It is said of the main character in the novel that:

“He even grew to like sounds unassociated with their meaning, and once made a list of the words he loved most, as doubloon, squadron, thatch, fanfare (he never did know the meaning of this one), Sphinx, pimpernel, Caliban, Setebos, Carib, susurro, torquet, Jungfrau. He was laughed at by a friend, but logic was his as well as sentiment; an Italian savant maintained that the most beautiful combination of English sounds was cellar-door; no association of ideas here to help out! sensuous impression merely! the cellar-door is purely American.”

In 1955 J. R. R. Tolkien wrote an essay entitled English and Welsh which has been mentioned as the origin of the idea:

“Most English-speaking people…will admit that cellar door is ‘beautiful’, especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.”

The OED lists a source from 1425, when it was written celer dore, as the earliest use of cellar door in English, though doesn’t mention the phonaesthetics of the term.

* Phonaesthetics is the study of the inherent pleasantness (euphony) or unpleasantness (cacophony) of the sound of certain words, phrases, and sentences. It comes from the Greek: φωνή (phōnē) – voice-sound; and αἰσθητική (aisthētikē) – aesthetics [source].

Cellar door words for me include spollagyn (chips/fries in Manx), schmetterling (butterfly in German) and spontus (terrible, awful in Breton). There are more examples on my favorite words page.

What are you cellar door words?

Omphaloskepsis

By Simon

Omphaloskepsis /ˈɒmfələʊˈskɛpsɪs/ is an interesting word I came across today that refers to the practice of contemplating one’s navel as an aid to meditation. It comes from the Ancient Greek ὀμϕαλός (omphalos – navel) and σκέψις (skepsis -inquiry).

Apparently omphaloskepsis is used in yoga and sometimes in the Eastern Orthodox Church and it helps in the contemplation of the basic principles of the cosmos and of human nature, and naval is consider by some to be a ‘powerful chakra’.

Omphaloskepsis is also another word for contemplating one’s navel or navel-gazing, i.e. being self-absorbed.

The French equivalent of omphaloskepsis is nombrilisme, from nombril (navel) plus -isme (-ism), and the Welsh equivalent is bogailsyllu, from bogail (navel) and syllu (to gaze, look). A French idiom the revolves around the navel is penser qu’on est le nombril du monde (‘to think that one is the navel of the world’) or to think the world revolves around you. Are there similar phrases in other languages?

On another topic, have you ever heard or used the phrase “who’s she, the cat’s mother?”.

It is, or was, used to point out that referring to a woman in the third person in her presence is/was considered rude by some. It apparently was first noted in the OED in the late 19th century.

Gendarmes et policiers

By Simon

Yesterday there was some discussion of the police at the French Conversation Group – one of the members is a former policeman. We use the word policier, but later I remembered that another French word for policeman is gendarme, and it suddenly dawned on me that gendarme probably comes from gens d’armes (armed man). I checked this today and it’s right. It’s not something I’ve really thought about before, but when I did think about it, it seemed so obvious. Do you find that with words sometimes?

According to Reverso, French country police officers are called les gendarmes, but those in towns are called les agents de police or les policiers. A community police officer is un îlotier and a traffic police officer is un agent de la circulation.

According to the OED and the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word police comes from the Middle French police (public order, administration, government), from the Latin polītīa (citizenship, political organization, government), which is also the root of policy, politics, politican, etc. and comes from the Ancient Greek πολιτεία (politeia – citizenship, government, administration) from πολίτης (polites – citizen) from πολίς (polis – city, state), from the Proto-Indo-European *p(o)lH- (enclosed space, often on high ground).