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I almost hesitate to bring this one up, for fear of where it may go; but what the heck, it's the holiday season.
a discussion of the word hysteria, and it's etymology, often leads to the question: isn't there a word for *male hysteria? [this is the path we don't need to follow!]
my point is that Mrs. Byrne, in her eponymous dictionary, defines the word 'tarassis' as "male hysteria"; my question is: what is her source? -- I've never been able to find this word in a "real" dictionary.
{were we to follow that other path, I could show you a vivid instance of why the OED is considered to be outmoded by some -- but then the OED is a historical dictionary, not synchronic like W3.}
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I put 'taras' into a Greek-to-English dictionary, and found this. It doesn't explain the part about being male-specific, but perhaps someone knowledgeable about Greek and Greek history/culture can make the connection. Does this help at all?
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Liddell & Scott Intermediate Lexicon
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Previous: Taras tarassô Next: tarachê
or see expanded entry in the LSJ9 (Great Scott).
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to stir, stir up, trouble, in a physical sense, etaraxe ponton Od.; homou t. tên te gên kai tên thalattan Ar.; brontêmasi kukatô panta Aesch.; panta t., of a speaker, to jumble up, Dem.; deina t. makes "confusion worse confounded," Soph.
[2] to trouble the mind, confound, agitate, disturb, disquiet, Trag., Plat., etc.: absol. to cause confusion, Plat.
[3] of an army, to throw into disorder, Hdt., Xen., etc.:mdash;Pass. to be in disorder, Hdt., Thuc.
[4] of political matters, to agitate, distract, Ar.:mdash;Pass. to be in a state of disorder or anarchy, Thuc., Dem.
[5] tarattesthai epi tôn hippôn to be shaken in one's seat on horseback, Xen.
[II] to stir up mud, raise by stirring up, Ar.: metaph., t. neikos, polemon Soph., Plat.; Pass., polemos etarachthê Dem.
[III] intr. perf. tetrêcha, to be in disorder or confusion, be in an uproar, tetrêchei d' agorê Il.; agorê tetrêchuia Il.
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enthusiast
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Urk. That's not as helpful as a paper Liddell & Scott, which gives each form in its alphabetical place. There's a word taraxis 'disturbance' from this root. As there's a form tarattesthai with -tt-/-ss- then there might be an alternative tarassis from the same root.
But I would have thought as 'hysteria' is from 'womb' the male equivalent would be something more obvious... erm... orchidia, anyone?
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Okay, enough guessing. I've been across the street to the library so here are some facts. There is no such word as tarassis. Mrs Byrne has got herself a mumpsimus, à mon avis.
The root tarakh- is a general one meaning 'disturbance, disorder, agitation, tumult'. Nouns from this root include tarakhê, táraxis, and taragmós, and the verb is tarásso: (Attic tarátto:).
Hippocrates used such forms specifically for 'disorder of the bowels'.
By the way, there is an amusing word hustêria: 'a festival at Argos in which pigs were sacrificed to Aphrodite' (with eta so unrelated to hustéra: 'womb'), presumably a pun on mustêria:.
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Pooh-Bah
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>I've been across the street to the library
That's a bit extreme isn't it? Imagine consulting a library. We've not had anyone who's done that before. Did it have books with real paper pages? Extraordinary!
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[hurt emoticon] It's quite a busy street and you have to wait at traffic lights. Not an entirely trivial expedition.
But hang on... naturally it doesn't count if you look up any kind of reference before answering, but I think I wouldn't be the first to do this. I suspect -- I can't prove it, mind -- that other people aren't all doing this entirely out of their own heads. Or am I maligning them horribly?
It should count against your postings score, using references should.
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NW>There is no such word as tarassis. Mrs Byrne has got herself a mumpsimus...
that being the case, I wonder whose error is she adhering to?
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Pooh-Bah
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>[hurt emoticon]
There, there. No it really was a trophy. I was impressed at the mention of paper, especially paper which/that one does not own. I have fond memories of libraries, these days it's all bookshops and digital on-line stuff.
I do look things up, honest. I either use one of my own mediocre dictionaries, look it up on-line or hope that tsuwm can dig out his OED (big version).
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It's only an ordinary borough library, with too many Ruth Rendells and Dark Knight comics and pop CDs and rough guides to Thailand and all such biblia abiblia encroaching on the core of knowledge, but it does have the full OED and big old two-volume Liddell & Scott: so in cases of doubt I can descend from Sinai and declare "It standeth written thus".
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NicholasW avers: It's only an ordinary borough library ... so in cases of doubt I can descend from Sinai and declare "It standeth written thus".Some borough library. Surely it has a reinforced floor and walls to take the weight of the stone tablets? At a rough estimate, based on my understanding that there were twelve comparatively short statements on two stone tablets in the original edition, that would make 192,587 tablets for "War and Peace" alone ... 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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