Naris, the word for ‘nostril’ in Latin, is used in the plural (nares) to mean ‘nose’. The Latin word derives from the Greek verb ναω meaning ‘to flow’ (just as the Greek word for ‘nose’ (ῥις, ῥινος) dervies from ῥεω, another verb meaning ‘to flow’). So the nose is associated radically with its flux―a throwback, perhaps, to an ancient theory of humours.
Read MoreThe Greek word προφητης means literally ‘who one speaks for another’ (from the verb φημι, ‘I speak’) , i.e. a spokesman, in particular for a deity: in other words one through whom a god or goddess speaks. Apollo, for instance, was known as Διος προφητης at the Delphic oracle. This does not mean the interpreter of Zeus, as some maintain, but rather his mouthpiece.
Read MoreMost of you Latin students will have come across the 3rd-declension adjective incolumis, meaning ‘safe after danger’ or ‘uninjured’. There is also an adjective columis, though you won’t find it in your dictionary.
Read MoreAs the Revd. Francis Valpy remarks in the introduction to his Etymological Dictionary of the Latin Language, Latin is intimately connected with Greek and the nature of the connection is not that of sister to sister, but of daughter to mother.
Read MoreThe Greek word παραδεισος (paradeisos) first appears in the writings of Xenophon (c.428-c.354 BC), for instance in his ‘Anabasis’ (c.370 BC), where the author refers to the park attached to Cyrus the Younger’s palace at Celaenae near the sauce of the Maeander river in Phrygia.
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