I was wondering if any of you have favorite words in Greek or Latin (or any other language for that matter). I have been going over a gloss list for Philo, and I came upon my new favorite word…
KALAMOSFAKTHS…it means “one who kills with a pen” It is NOT to be taken in a metaphorical sense, but is used (in context), of a spurned poet who goes and slays his critics with his pen!! Pretty cool huh?
My other favorite is ANAKEFALAIWSASQAI just because it’s so darn long. I had to read this work in my Koine class, and it was a tongue tier the first time I tried. It means “to sum up under one head”.
κατατα?τά?ωσις throwing someone/something down to Tartarus. There is also a verb for it, κατα-τα?τα?όω, which I ran across in Apollodorus.
?νχει?ίδιον this means “something in the hand.” I know it mostly as “handbook,” but recently ran across it in Herodotus, in the context of an assasination, which was preplexing at first. It also means “dagger.” The sheer perversity of such a semantic range leaves me with warm feelings about the word.
jumalainen vuori kaunis means divine river and beautiful in finnish, respectively. (really any finnish word sounds good to me) durran in anglo saxon means ‘to dare’
coniurati I always liked that one. it means conspirators.
I like to write down interesting words that I come across, but I really need to gather all of those notes together sometime. I just discovered this word recently, only because it was near another word in the dictionary, and it made me chuckle: ῥινεγκαταπηξιγένειος, which LSJ defines as with a nose reaching to the chin.
Several months ago, I discovered the adj ἱππόκ?ημνος, tremendously steep, and then found this interesting usage by Aristophanes in the dictionary: ἱππόκ?ημνον ῥῆμα, a tremendously steep word, or a neck-breaking word, as LSJ renders it. The sense I get from the Aristophanes’ passage seems to be “haughty” or “complex” words, which the audience doesn’t understand.
couple of weeks ago i tried to post here but my psot didnt come through, so i’ll try again.. these are some words i find interesting, either as sound or concept or both