Re: Deadly Nightshade

On 6/10/2024 6:52 p.m., Steve Hayes wrote:

On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 18:40:08 +0100, Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk>
wrote:
 

Belladonna
It acquired its alter name in the middle ages, when women used it
because of how it dilates the pupils, making them more sexy.
Beautiful Lady.
>
Pagan.
In Latin "paganus" meant "villager" or "peasant". That's what Cicero
would have understood. But early Christians used it as a depreciatory
term for those who stuck to polytheistic or pre-Christian beliefs; the
gods of Old Rome.

 Pagan - origin of the term.
          Source: Fox, "Christian & Pagans" 1987:30.
     "In antiquity, pagans already owed a debt to Christians.
   Christians first gave them their name, pagani... In everyday
   use, it meant either a civilian or a rustic. Since the
   sixteenth century the origin of the early Christians' usage
   has been disputed, but of the two meanings, the former is the
   likelier. Pagani were civilians who had not enlisted through
   baptism as soldiers of Christ against the powers of Satan. By
   its word for non-believers, Christian slang bore witness to
   the heavenly battle which coloured Christians' view of life."

OED's etymological note:
The semantic development of post-classical Latin paganus in the sense ‘non-Christian, heathen’ is unclear.....
There are three main explanations of the development:
(i) The older sense of classical Latin pāgānus is ‘of the country, rustic’ (also as noun). It has been argued that the transferred use reflects the fact that the ancient idolatry lingered on in the rural villages and hamlets after Christianity had been generally accepted in the towns and cities of the Roman Empire; compare Orosius Histories 1. Prol. ‘Ex locorum agrestium compitis et pagis pagani vocantur.’
(ii) The more common meaning of classical Latin pāgānus is ‘civilian, non-militant’ (adjective and noun). Christians called themselves mīlitēs ‘enrolled soldiers’ of Christ, members of his militant church, and applied to non-Christians the term applied by soldiers to all who were ‘not enrolled in the army’.
(iii) The sense ‘heathen’ arose from an interpretation of paganus as denoting a person who was outside a particular group or community, hence ‘not of the city’ or ‘rural’; compare Orosius Histories 1. Prol. ‘qui alieni a civitate dei..pagani vocantur.’ See C. Mohrmann Vigiliae Christianae vol. 6 (1952) 9ff.
[Thus people from outside the city -- the City of God.]