{"id":158,"date":"2004-01-14T16:21:17","date_gmt":"2004-01-14T20:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2004\/01\/14\/more-greekish-fun\/"},"modified":"2004-01-14T16:21:17","modified_gmt":"2004-01-14T20:21:17","slug":"more-greekish-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2004\/01\/14\/more-greekish-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"More Greekish Fun"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

A couple of Greeky words I’ve learnt recently. All basically regurgitated OED. I don’t intend to harp on this too much, but my conscience requires me to tell you that you should really just get yourself an OED and look everything up instead of reading this.<\/p>\n

\n
Cataclysm<\/dt>\n
\nThis is Greek “cataclysmos”. From kata<\/i>, “down”, and clyzein<\/i>, “to wash, dash like a wave”.<\/p>\n

\nIn English it can mean any huge downpour, but is taken especially to refer to Noah’s flood — or as I call it, the Noachian deluge. Our more modern uses are pretty obvious extensions of this.\n<\/dd>\n

Loosestrife<\/dt>\n
\nThis lovely flower, ornament of our ditches, is known to the learned as lysimachion<\/i>. Pliny states that oxen which are made to eat it are more willing to draw together. Hmm! Is loosestrife psychoactive? John Fletcher thought so! Take f’rinstance this from his 1610 Faithful Shepherdess<\/i>: “Yellow Lecimachus, to giue sweete rest To the faint Shepheard.” Let a thousand flowers bloom, that’s what I say!<\/p>\n

\nThe lysi<\/i>, to dissolve or “loose”, is familiar to us from many words, such as glycolysis and lysosome. They don’t call him lysosome “’cause he runs so fast”, despite what you may have heard. And who doesn’t recognize mach<\/i> as Greekish “strife”?<\/p>\n

\nPliny also alleges that loosestrife was “discovered” by one Lysimachus, and hence the name. Sounds a little pat to me, but OED seems to credit it…\n<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of Greeky words I’ve learnt recently. All basically regurgitated OED. I don’t intend to harp on this too much, but my conscience requires me to tell you that you should really just get yourself an OED and look everything up instead of reading this. Cataclysm This is Greek “cataclysmos”. From kata, “down”, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}