Thursday, May 7, 2020

IT'S GREEK TO ME
Do you speak Greek?
Sure you do: fantasy, category, eon, epoch, apathy, catalyst, analysis, synthesis, symbol, dogma, Christ, meteorology, mystery, auto ( =self), practice, catholic ( =universal), organic, micron, mega, dialogue (and many dia- words),
scheme, idea, skeptic, graph, prologue,

prototype (and many pro- words),
telegraph ( = distance + write; and many tele- words)
... and many, many more.
All of us speak a lot of Greek without even knowing it. Modern English is chockablock with words that are either directly Greek or derived from Greek.
You can thank British literary men of the Elizabethan era and later for much of that. Plus scientists from thence forward planted a lot of Hellenisms on us.
Take the word "psychology."
That's from Greek "psyche" ( =soul or mind)
and "logos" ( =word or principle and now taken to mean "study of").
Another one: "pornography" which splices Greek words for "evil" and "write."
Much Greek also comes down through Latin, which is a major component of modern English.

No comments:

Post a Comment

<i>Whose</i> on first?

Another rant from the Copy Desk Why do we write whose to indicate possession and not who's , as the apostrophe-s form normally signa...