Old English Phrases and Classical Words

I have been putting together a list of classical words that we sometimes use in English, or at least are in the dictionary. Some of these are useful terms. For example, someone who has a "platonic" love for another person does not have a "physical" relationship with that person. A "stoic" individual is someone who, like the ancient Stoics, is imperturbable. Epicurean delights have to do with gustatory pleasure, even though the Epicureans from antiquity didn't just celebrate the belly. "Skeptics" are those who believe few things or are slow to convince that something is true. A "cynical" person, however, is carping, sarcastic or caustic.

But lots of terms are seemingly limited in their meaning. Though one might have a "socratic" method in law school, in which the professor interrogates the student with much less skill than Socrates demonstrated, if you have something "Euripidean," it simply is "pertaining to or resembling Euripides." What might that mean? Well, almost anything if it is present in Euripides. It might relate to his style, his way of doing tragedy, the arrangement of his works, etc. No one uses "Euripidean" anymore. Likewise with "Apollonian." Such a word means "like Apollo," and could have reference to wisdom or precise proportion or lots of things, but we have lost any determinate meaning for it today. Yet, Nietzsche wrote years ago about the difference between the Apollonian (which I think he spelled Apollinian) and Dionysian characteristics of Greek drama. So, the contrast must have meant something at one time.

Well, there is even a reference in the OED to Apollonian as referring to Apollonius of Perga, a famous Greek geometer and investigator of conic sections. If we meant it in that fashion, we would be dealing with parabolas and hyperbolas for quite a while. In fact, when I was a graduate student at Brown University, the course I most wanted to take, but couldn't fit into my schedule, was taught by the MacArthur-winning historian of mathematics David Pingree. I think the course was entitled "The History of Conic Sections in the Middle Ages." Now, if that isn't one for the ages...

Quickly now. We have the word aristarch, a noun, to describe a captious critic, but we also have words like anacreontic, which means "convivial or amatory" ("He laughed and sang with anacreontic spirit") or sapphic. The last term is simply defined by the OED as something like Sappho's verses, but because she has had a renascence in the last twenty years, what that really means is erotic or lesbian verses. Thus, a sapphic stanza would be a verse that has that tenor to it. Something thrasonical "resembles Thraso" in his character, that is someone whose behavior is "marked by boasting; bragging." The Roman comic dramatist Terence, whom no one reads today, introduced this character in the Eunuchus. We could use the term today--"I've had enough of your thrasonical behavior..."

Then, I will finish this brief list with stentorian, like Stentor. Stentor was the guy in the Iliad who called the Greeks to assembly. He had to have a big voice to do this, indeed. So it is that someone who has a stentorian voice today has a loud voice. We also have stentorious, stentoronic, stentorophonic, among other words. Oh, I guess I will really conclude with iscariotic. This has nothing to do with the ischeum, but relates to treacherous behavior, ala Judas Iscariot. I am not sure that if our speech were leavened with classical adjectives that it would be enriched, but it certainly would not become impoverished.

Some Old English Words and Others

The olde English words that interest me are those like whilom, eftsoons, perzactly, yclept, elsewhither, and haply. Whilom simply means "at times" or "once upon a time" or "formerly." "The wisful eyes which whilom glance down..upon the sweet clover fields." Eftsoons means "soon after," though it really can mean a whole many more things than that. "She waved round her staff: Eftsoons appeared Spirits and witches." Or, the word perzactly. Actually this is a relatively recent term (coined 1850) and means "exactly or prescisely." I guess it could be seen as a portmanteau word, including both of these terms. From 2001: "You mean Edgar was shot?" "Not perzactly," said the sheriff. Something yclept is something "called." "Yclept the King of Heaven." Or, elsewhither means "to some other place, in some other direction." Formerly it was also "whithersoever." "She was sent to the town or elsewither to buy bread." Just looking at the OED entries around elsewither showes us that we could really go more deeply into this subject: elsewhence, elsewhen, elsewhat, elsehow, etc. I will stop here. Finally, haply is quite useful, even today, to speak of something that might occur by chance. It appears throughout the King James Version Bible, and retains it usage today.

Conclusion--a Few "Isms"

When I ran across the word betacism, I realized that I needed to get my "cisms" straight with respect to pronunciation of Greek. There was a long historical debate between the followers of Johannes Reuchin and Desiderius Erasmus regarding how to pronunce the Greek iota. If you were an "ittacist" or "itacist" you would pronounce the Greek "eta" like a double "ee" in English. Reuchlin's school was called Itacists, "from the continual recurrence of the sound of Iota in modern Greek, being distinguished from the Etists of Erasmus' party." These "Etists" are really "etacists." "Itacism" could also be known as "Iotacism." It really matters not an iota to me or to most people, I am sure, but at least it fills out our understanding of what was, at one time, a burning philological issue--how to pronounce Greek. Oh, by the way, the word that got me started on all of this--betacism-is the tendency to pronounce the Latin "vee" like a "bee" sound. The first appearance of the word in 1885 defined the term. "Even these forms were threatened with destruction by the spread of Betacismus, whereby amavit was pronounced like amabit and vice versa."

There you have it. Now, maybe we can return to some terms that help us understand the Primate world.

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