Re: Word of the day: "ithyphallic"

On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 21:49:11 +0200
nospam@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J. Lodder) wrote:

occam <occam@nowhere.nix> wrote:
 

On 19/09/2024 06:59, Aidan Kehoe wrote:

Another one that stuck for me was "metic", "resident foreigner in a
Greek city state," apparently not related to meticulous.

 
Try 'hermetic' as a related concept. A 'foreigner' in ancient Greek was
someone from another city state, even if that was a city in Greece.
'Greece' did not become an entity until much later.

 
Depends on what you want 'entity' to mean.
Those ancient Greeks certainly saw themselves as a cultural entity,
with a shared language and culture. This extended to 'Greater Greece'.
It was only the narrow sense of a political entity that was
inconceivable to them,

In his travels (read killing spree) Alexander encountered some lost Greek
settlement; unfortunately for them they hadn't kept up *all* the right
procedures to appease the gods, so he had to slaughter them as well.


--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.