Frequently an Oedipus, an Antigone, a Macbeth, a Lear, or a Cleopatra is brought to doom by excessive pride--hubris--a belief that he or she is somehow above the fates, or in control of destiny.
biol> NOTE LINK OF HUBRIS WITH A HYBRID rooted in the ROMAN HABIT OF CROSSING OR HYBRIDIZING DOMESTIC PIGS WITH A BOAR ply> | A PIG BEHAVING AS A BOAR HAS LOTS OF HUBRIS | ply> | HUMAN HUBRIS IS TRANSFERRED TO PIG SWINE HOG | lit+ " THE HUBRIS OF THE AGE ... " hx> IN RECENT TIMES ABUNDANT HUBRIS WAS FOUND IN AMATEUR STATESMEN WHO THOUGHT THAT SUCCESS IN WALL STREET WAS AN ENTITLEMENT TO ... MANAGE "THE AMERICAN CENTURY" AFTER THE VICTORY OF WORLD WAR II sug> KENNEDY, BISSELL etc HUBRIS led to the FAILED WARS IN KOREA and VIET NAM augmented by FAILED SOCIAL POLICIES or "WARS"
hubristes:an insolent man one who, uplifted with pride, either heaps insulting language upon others or does them some shameful act of wrong
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timberlandko
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Sun 26 Jan, 2003 08:24 am
LOL!
Why, JD ... Thanks for the kind dedication. I'd thought you'd forgotten!
timber
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JoanneDorel
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Mon 27 Jan, 2003 08:18 am
FOOTBALL
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001.
Any of a number of games in which two opposing teams attempt to score points by moving an inflated oval or round ball past a goal line or into a goal. Differing greatly in their rules, these include soccer (association football) and rugby, in addition to the games covered in this article: American football, Canadian football, Gaelic football, and Australian football. In the United States, the word football generally refers only to the American game; in other parts of the world it usually means soccer. Football, amateur and professional, is perhaps the most popular spectator sport in the United States, attracting a total attendance of over 40 million and watched by many more millions on television each year.
Most of the modern forms of football are derived from ancient games, especially harpaston and harpastrum, played in Greece and Rome. These survive today in Tuscany and Florence under the name calcio. Meanwhile a rugged, undisciplined type of football took root in the Middle Ages in England, where despite royal edicts banning the game from time to time, football remained popular until the early 19th cent. Different forms of the game soon developed at the various English public schools, including Rugby, Eton, and Harrow. Eventually, two main games emerged. One was primarily a kicking game, which later became association football, or soccer; the other (dating from 1823) was football as played at Rugby, in which carrying the ball and tackling were permitted.
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JoanneDorel
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Mon 27 Jan, 2003 11:49 pm
guttle
guttle (GUT-l) verb tr., intr.
To eat voraciously; to devour greedily.
[From gut, on the pattern of guzzle, from Middle English gut, from plural guttes (entrails), from Old English guttas.]
"Wednesday was early closing day in Umtali, a relief for both of us, and Mr. Gordon was not obliged to linger at the truckshop where he would read the notices posted on the board over the cash register or inspect the polish on his shoes or crack his lumpy knuckles while he waited for me to guttle my ice cream."
George Makana Clark, A is For Ancestors, Transition (Durham, N. Carolina), 2000.
"Confess my pipings, dancings, posings served
A purpose: guttlings, guzzlings, had their use!"
Robert Browning, Aristophanes' Apology, 1875.
Ah! JD got to guttle before I did! Great word, eh?
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JoanneDorel
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Wed 29 Jan, 2003 07:45 am
A.Word.A.Day--CHAFFER
chaffer (CHAF-uhr) verb tr., intr.
1. To haggle; to bargain.
2. To bandy words; to chatter.
noun
Bargaining or haggling.
[Imagine harried passengers on the cobblestoned streets of 13th century London, haggling with the coach drivers (cheap fare!) while horses neigh in the background and it's easy to see the derivation of this term. It came to us from Middle English chaffare, eventually from Old English ceap (trade, purchase), precursor of English cheap + faru (journey). Extension of the term to gossip or chatter was the logical evolution. Today, when we scour Web sites looking for cheap airline tickets, our quest for cheap fares continues.]
"Or lulling random squabbles when they rise,
Chafferings and chatterings at the market-cross ..." Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King: The Holy Grail, 1868.
"I chaffered with the king of those people, who was a wise and far-sighted woman, and brought her to understand that it would be much to her advantage to accept from me half the arms and ammunition I had brought with me ..." Delia Sherman, The Parwat Ruby, Fantasy & Science Fiction (Cornwall, Connecticut), Jun 1999.
1. To burst open, as the pod of a plant.
2. To gape.
[When a peapod is ripe after a long wait and bursts open, it's yawning, etymologically speaking. The term dehisce comes from Latin dehiscere (to split open), from hiscere (to gape, yawn), from Latin hiare (to yawn). Another term that derives from the same root is hiatus.]
1. To march out from a narrow or confined place into an open area.
2. To emerge or issue from a narrow area into the open.
[From French deboucher, from de- (out of) + boucher, from bouche (mouth), from Latin bucca (mouth or cheek). The word buckle (as in a belt) derives from the same Latin root.]
"Just after 10 a.m., shlepping kit, personal weapons and the heavy Brownings and their tripods, we doubled through the Sanhedria cemetery (a most unsuitable place to start a war, I panted to Ben-Yishai) and debouched into a woefully shallow trench at the foot of Ammunition Hill." Meir Ronnen, At the Foot of Ammunition Hill, Jerusalem Post (Israel), Jun 7, 2002.
"Russia, the world's second-largest oil exporter, wants Central Asian resources to be transported across its territory. Iran, also an oil producer, wants the energy pipelines to debouch at its ports, the shortest route." Eric S. Margolis, Russia Checkmated Its New Best Friend, The Los Angeles Times, Nov 28, 2001.
This week's theme: verbs.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. -Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton), historian (1834-1902)
patronym (PA-truh-nim) noun
1. A name derived from the name of father or an ancestor,
e.g. Johnson (son of John).
2. A surname or family name.
[From Greek patronymous (patronymic), from patri- (father) + -onym (name).]
Here are a few more patronyms from other languages and cultures:
Arabic bin (bin Laden, son of Laden), bint (Bint Ahmed, daughter of Ahmed)
Hebrew ben (Ben-Gurion, son of Gurion; Ben-Hur, son of Hur)
Hindi -putra/put (Brahmaputra, son of Brahma; Rajput, son of king)
Irish and Scottish Mac/Mc- (McDonald, son of Donald)
Irish O (O'Brien, grandson/descendant of Brien)
Norman Fitz- (Fitzgerald, son of Gerald)
Russian -ich/-vich, as a middle name (Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, son of Pavel).
Spanish -ez (Fernandez, son of Fernando; Gonzalez son of Gonzalo)
Welsh ap or p (Pritchard from ap Richard, son of Richard).
"Consider her humble origins. Born to a Russian species, slapped with
a French patronym, she came to us bearing a standard-poodle pedigree
that guaranteed her to be purebred American. Just like her owners."
Ellen Goodman, Is Your Old Dog Ready to be a Senior Citizen?,
The Seattle Times, Nov 19, 1986.
[From Old Norse blathra (to chatter) + Scots dialect skate (a contemptible
person).]
What does today's word have in common with the following seemingly disparate words: bladder, flatus, blast, flavor, inflate, souffle, afflatus? They all are ultimately derived from the Indo-European root bhle- and involve the idea of blowing. -Anu
"You can play it solo, but that bouncing, blatherskite of a compere keeps
nagging at you to get a partner." Mark Butler, Movie Trivia an Interesting Cameo, The Australian (Sydney), May 27,1997.
"We should perhaps clarify that we do not prefer lawmaking by politicians
to lawmaking by judges because we have some unhealthy fondness for the blatherskites who every four years knock on your front door and want to put up a sign on the lawn." Ian Hunter, Judge-bashing is Here to Stay, National Post (Canada), Mar 30, 2000.
1. Of or pertaining to a cingulum, an anatomical band or girdle on an animal or plant.
2. Encircling, girdling, surrounding.
[From Latin cingulum (girdle), from cingere (to gird). Other words that are derived from the same roots are cincture, precinct, shingles, and succinct.]
"Differs ... in the greater degree of cingular development on cheek teeth, especially molars." Daniel L Gebo, et al; A Hominoid Genus; Science (Washington, DC); Apr 18, 1997.
[From Latin lucent, from lucere (to shine). Other words derived from the same root are elucidate, lucid, and translucent.]
"Now I am nestling on the sofa, antique crystal glass in one hand, elegant bottle of lucent amber in the other." Victoria Moore; Sweet Surrender; New Statesman (London); Dec 18, 1998.
"Fair Hope with lucent light in her glad eyes, Fleet as Diana, through the meadow speeds;" Henrietta Cordelia Ray; The Quest of the Ideal; 1893.
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JoanneDorel
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Wed 5 Feb, 2003 12:33 am
PEDANT
Pronunciation: 'pe-d&nt
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French, from Italian pedante
Date: 1588
1 obsolete : a male schoolteacher
2 a : one who makes a show of knowledge
b : one who is unimaginative or who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge
c : a formalist or precisionist in teaching
PEDANTRIC
Pronunciation: pi-'dan-tik
Function: adjective
Date: circa 1600
1 : of, relating to, or being a pedant
2 : narrowly, stodgily, and often ostentatiously learned
3 : UNIMAGINATIVE, PEDESTRIAN
