A bit less bare-bones list of 12 items:
Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
71–80 of 247 posts
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#72Not kairos?
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#73my favorite of this is Episteme - i spend a lot of time thinking about how we know what we think we know, and wish that more people did as well before mouthing off completely incorrect or unexamined beliefs (esp not understanding when the dependencies under which they are true, are no longer true). p.s. TIL that Odysseus was forced to be a sex slave for 7 years?
Forced!
Yes. He was captured by Calypso, and held on an island against his will. It's said he wept bitterly every night at the shore, longing to be back with his wife. He was not in control, he was not happy, he was not free to leave.
So yeah, forced seems right.
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#74Xenia is what the Xen hypervisor is named after.
Almost! :-) I coined the term "Xenoserver" back in 1999, for a paper in IEEE HotOS proposing an architecture for allowing systems in core networks to safely accept and execute code from untrusted users (for a fee, of course!): https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/papers/1999-hoto... I was inspired by the word "xenos" (meaning both stranger and guest, or in combination a stranger who you invited into your home)…
Wow, HN is amazing. Thank you for the correction, the additional context, and your contributions to the field!
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#75As a Greek, living in Greece i second most of the terms. Know thyself (γνώθι σαυτόν) is a big one as well. Ancient Greeks were masters of psychology, i.e. what kind of animal humans are. Are we a good creature by nature or a bad one? The more we study chimps the more we realize that we, as their descendants, are pretty vicious as well. Education by our parents, schools and social circles play a big role, to keep in c…
First I'd heard of this, but there is some preliminary evidence that saffron has positive effects on depressive symptoms:
https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/77/8/557/5...
But if this was really significant, you'd expect saffron-producing/eating countries to stand out. Iran is #1, are they really all 1,000,000x happy geniuses?
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#76Xenia plays a very important role in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The idea of obligations running in both directions makes it a much richer concept than simple “hospitality.”
That sounds very interesting. What were these obligations?
In addition to sibling comments, an author of a very recent translation has also written an article on xenia in the odyssey https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/the-ody...
See also their translator's note to their translation
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#77These are great suggestions. Adding these words to your own internal vocabulary is totally worth it for self-reflection. Less seriously, a grammatical construction I wish we had in English is the Latin future passive participle, typically ending in -ndus, -nda, -ndum. It means that something needs/ought to be done. For instance "Amanda" is "she who must be loved." So if someone asks you why your feature isn't in prod…
On the subject of grammar, Greek grammar (ancient? I assume this one has carried into modernity) has a handy construction I like in the form of the particles μέν and δέ, used to highlight counterpoint/point through something closer to grammar than word semantics. You might see it translated as "on the one hand x, on the other hand y" or "while x, y" or "x, but y", in English, it loses a lot of its punch. Like the ver…
Yep, Ancient Greek has great particle game that English just can’t translate at all.
And as you say, they’re really like gesture words, which make so much sense, especially as text is now read/written without any human speaking behaviour at all.
Arguably emojis fill this need, but I’m unconvinced.
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds very interesting. What were these obligations?
In addition to sibling comments, an author of a very recent translation has also written an article on xenia in the odyssey https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/the-ody... See also their translator's note to their translation
Great article, thanks for sharing.
Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#79Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
#80These are great suggestions. Adding these words to your own internal vocabulary is totally worth it for self-reflection. Less seriously, a grammatical construction I wish we had in English is the Latin future passive participle, typically ending in -ndus, -nda, -ndum. It means that something needs/ought to be done. For instance "Amanda" is "she who must be loved." So if someone asks you why your feature isn't in prod…
> future passive participle, typically ending in -ndus, -nda, -ndum.
...
> It means that something needs/ought to be done.
> something needs/ought to be done.
> "she who must be loved."
All of your examples are in the present tense.