Words with their origins in characters from Greek
mythology
from A. Word.A.Day with Anu
Garg
odyssey (AH-duh-see)
noun A long eventful journey or
experience. After Odysseus, whose
10-year wandering after the fall of Troy is described in Homer's epic poem, the
Odyssey. Earliest documented
use: 1886.
narcissist (NAHR-si-sist)
noun Someone with excessive
self-interest or self-love.
In Greek mythology,
Narcissus was a hunter and a young man of exceptional beauty. He spurned the nymph Echo. One day he saw his reflection in water and
fell in love with himself. Not realizing
it was himself and unable to leave, he eventually died. Earliest documented use: 1917.
atlas (AT-luhs) noun 1. A
person who supports a great burden.
2. A book of maps, charts, tables,
plates, etc. 3. The top vertebra of the backbone, which
supports the skull. 4. A size of drawing paper 26x33 or 26x34
inches. 5. An architectural column in the shape of a
man. (Plural: atlantes.
Another word for this is telamon. The female equivalent is caryatid.) After Atlas, a Titan in Greek mythology, who
was condemned by Zeus to support the heavens.
A book of maps is called an atlas because early books of this kind
depicted Atlas on the cover holding the earth on his shoulders. Earliest documented use: 1589.
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From: Stephen
Glass Subject:
Words from mythology I was a professor
of Classics and Classical archaeology for 51 years, and regularly taught a
class in Classical mythology. In the
final exam, I always included, just for fun, a series of what I liked to call
"crossword puzzle" references, among which was always a series of
English words derived from Classical myth and religion. Wordsmith readers might want to try this
sampler: Procrustean, protean, bacchanalian, Sisyphean, iridescent, halcyon, chimerical, junoesque, aegis, eristic. It's interesting to note that the English
language is not very decisive about whether to capitalize adjectives derived
from mythological proper names.
Procrustean and Sisyphean, for example, are usually capitalized, while
junoesque, protean, and bacchanalian are not.
From: Mary
Holbrow Subject:
narcissist In many narcissus species the blossoms tend
to droop, as if leaning over the water to admire their reflections.
From: Charlotte
Macauley Subject:
narcissist This word reminds me
of a friend. The selfie craze seriously
bothers him. He believes only
narcissists can possibly take so many pictures of the face they see in the
mirror every day. So, he says the scientific
measure for narcissism is selfie per hour (sf\h).
From: Norma
Meyer
Subject: atlas I believe the first "Caption this"
contest of The New Yorker showed a man resembling Atlas coming up the
walk to his house. Young son spots him
and yells to Mom inside, (take your pick) "Mom,
Dad's been on ebay again." or "Better make it a double,
Mom."
“Do you know the difference between
education and experience? Education is when you read the
fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.” “Any darn fool can make
something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.” “Singing with children in the schools has
been the most rewarding experience of my life.” “It's a very important thing to
learn to talk to people you disagree with.” Pete
Seeger American folk singer and activist (1919-2014) http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/30113.Pete_Seeger
Peter Mendelsund estimates he's designed "somewhere between 600 and 1,000 book
covers," ranging from Crime and Punishment to Girl
with the Dragon Tattoo. But the
self-taught, sought-after designer says he spends a lot of time reading,
too. "It's always surprising to
people when they come to my office or they walk by my door and they see me with
my feet kicked up with a manuscript," he tells Fresh Air's
Dave Davies. "But I read constantly
from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep." Now Mendelsund has designed the covers for
two new books of his own. Cover is a collection of hundreds
of his book covers, including many that were rejected, along with commentaries
on his technique. What We See When We Read is about how words
give rise to images in our minds. Find highlights of
an interview with Peter Mendelsund at http://www.npr.org/2014/10/16/345548582/the-jacket-designers-challenge-to-capture-a-book-by-its-cover
EPONYM:
MERCERIZE John
Mercer (1791-1866) worked in his father's cotton mill in Lancaster,
England, and, through a fellow worker, learned to read and write when he was
ten years old. John's primary interest,
which had been music, changed to the art of dyeing and, because he was a
handloom weaver, he worked on and invented devices that wove stripes and
checks. In 1850, at the age of
fifty-nine, he perfected a process for treating cottons with caustic soda,
sulphuric acid, and zinc chloride, which shrinks, strengthens, and gives a
permanent silky luster to the fabric.
Furthermore, cloth so treated made the fabric more absorbent so that it
held dyes more readily. Mercer's process was not so successful as it
might have been, however, because of the shrinkage of the fabric. He had overlooked the treating of the
material under tension. Long after his
death, a correction was made, and the shrinkage was virtually eliminated. But Mercer's name remained as the inventor of
the treatment process. Today we say that
cotton goods have been mercerized, or that we have bought a spool of mercerized
cotton. http://eponyms.enacademic.com/255/Mercerize
The prefix EN or EM means: in, into,
within, inside; to make or become something; to give, provide with
something. Note: EN becomes EM before the letters b, m and p.
The Library of America, a nonprofit publisher, is dedicated to
publishing, and keeping in print, authoritative editions of America's best and
most significant writing. Hailed by The
New York Times Book Review as
the "quasi-official national canon" of American literature, The
Library of America each year adds new volumes collecting essential novels,
stories, poetry, plays, essays, journalism, historical writing, speeches, and
more. Find a complete list of titles
arranged by subject at http://www.loa.org/catalog.jsp?sort=3. Recent and forthcoming volumes feature the
work of Saul Bellow, Elizabeth Bishop, John Cheever, Philip K. Dick, Jack Kerouac, A. J. Liebling, William Maxwell, Thornton Wilder, and Edmund Wilson, as
well as the definitive edition of Philip Roth's collected works. The best-selling authors in the series
include James Baldwin, Robert Frost, Dashiell Hammett, Zora Neale Hurston, Thomas Jefferson, H. P. Lovecraft, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Paine, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Walt Whitman.
The Library of America also recently published the special anthologies American Earth, American Food
Writing, The Lincoln Anthology,
and True Crime. http://www.loa.org/
Musician Raphael Ravenscroft, who played one of the most famous saxophone solos of
all time on Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street,” has died. He was 60.
The bluesy eight-bar sax riff helped make “Baker Street” a soft-rock
hit. It reached No. 3 in Britain and No.
2 in the U.S. in 1978, and still receives considerable airplay. He received a flat fee — often reported to be
27 pounds (about $43 today) — for his work on the song, which made Rafferty a
fortune. But the hit kick-started Mr.
Ravenscroft’s career, and he went on to work with big names including Pink
Floyd, ABBA and Marvin Gaye. In 1979, he
released a solo album, “Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway.” He also wrote a successful instruction manual,
“The Complete Saxophone Player.”
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1208
October 24. 2014 On this date in
1857, Sheffield
F.C., the world's oldest association football club still in operation, was
founded in Sheffield,
England. On this date in 1931, the George Washington Bridge opened to public traffic.
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