Ancient Etymology and the Enigma of Okeanos

Okeanos is at once a mythological figure and a philosophical concept appearing in many ancient accounts of the world. A frequent object of allegoresis, his cosmological role and his name posed an enigma to Homer’s readers, especially those with a rationalizing bent. This paper proposes that the paradoxical representation of Okeanos as a primordial generative power and a geographical limit may be explained by the influence of etymological speculation, which was a popular heuristic method used by Greek intellectuals from the archaic period throughout antiquity.

Lucretian Etymologies

This chapter assesses the role of etymological thinking, both explicit and implicit, in De Rerum Natura. After establishing some fundamental distinctions in ancient etymology, it constructs an argument to demonstrate that strong ‘atomological’ readings of Lucretius’ etymological wordplay are not robustly supported by what we know of the Epicurean theory of language. It goes on to suggest that Lucretian etymological wordplay is primarily concerned with demonstrating diachronic relations between words (i.e. derivations). These derivations are the result of the long second stage of language development, on the Epicurean theory. The chapter demonstrates this thesis with the help of numerous examples, both explicit and implicit, taken from the text of DRN.

Pulling Apollo Apart

This paper considers the etymologising of the names of Apollo in Plato, Cratylus and Plutarch, The E at Delphi. It is argued that the richness of the god’s etymologies in these texts and in classical literature more generally suggests that a special connection was seen between the nature of Apollo and the practices of etymologising; this connection is in part owed to the similarities between etymologising and prophetic speech and practice and in part to the fact that ancient etymology reveals settled, unchanging truths about language, just as Apollo manifests the settled, unchanging order of the world. The paper sheds light not just upon ancient etymological practice from Homer onwards but also on certain conceptions of the nature of Apollo.

THE PRESENTATION OF THE KINSHIP TERMS WITH UNCODIFIED MEANING IN THE THESAURUSES OF THE ENGLISH SUBSTANDARD VOCABULARY

Today the attention of Russian and foreign researchers shifed to the area of sub-standard lexical fund, the study of its features and characteristics, semantics and etymology. Among the thematic layers of sub-standard vocabulary, the lexical group of “terms of kinship” is of paramount importance because of its ancient etymology, greater stability and generality. In the article the linguistic concept of “kinship terms” is specifed, and the existing approaches to their classifcation are provided. In addition, method of comparative analysis allows us to compare the semantic felds of terms of blood kinship in English and Russian. Тhe study presents the analysis of lexicographical sources of the substandard vocabulary of the English language aiming at determining kinship terms, including the composition of phrases, manifesting uncodifed meanings, i.e. meanings that are outside of their literary terminological feld. Te method of continuous sampling was used to achieve this goal. It was concluded that most terms of blood kinship have non-literary meanings in the English language.

Derivation

This chapter studies derivations. The formation of words from words was also a topic of ancient etymology. At least as early as the first century BC, in Roman scholar Varro’s study of the Latin language, the origin of words was taken to have two aspects. One was their initial application or assignment to things. The priority at that point was that words assigned should be as few as possible, so that they could be learned more quickly. The other is distinguished in an earlier passage as the way in which ‘the derivatives of these names have arrived at their differences’. The priority there was that derivatives should be as many as possible, so that people ‘may more easily say those that they need to use’. The first aspect called for historical inquiry into forms individually. In contrast, the second required a technical study, with a few brief precepts that are as short as possible.

Ancient ‘etymology’ and Tibullus: on the classification of ‘etymologies’ and on ‘etymological markers’

Ancient ‘etymology’ is now such a well-established modern scholarly interest that a paper about it need no longer be prefaced by an account of its commonest forms or by a justification of its importance, especially in poetry – and that despite the pseudo-etymological nature of many ancient etymologies. For such matters it is sufficient to refer to what have already become the standard works on ancient etymologies and etymologising. If further explanation of the high intellectual status accorded by antiquity to etymologising seems necessary, it can be provided economically by reference to those ancient philosophical theories of language, e.g. that of the Stoics, which held that words are related to the reality (φύσις) of the things which they name, and to the close links which surviving ancient etymological treatises assert between etymology (i.e. derivations) and ‘semantics’ (i.e. meaning). The etymologies most familiar to older classical scholarship are those revolving around proper names; but even before the recent upsurge of interest in ancient etymology there was some awareness of the additional potential for common nouns, verbs and adjectives to be etymologised.