#121838 - 02/01/04 12:14 PM
alopecia
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 01/18/01
Posts: 13858
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Most males become sadly familiar with this term. But take a look at the etymology!
alopecia [ˌ©¡lə'pi¢°ʃ©¥ə]
noun loss of hair, esp. on the head; baldness
[ETYMOLOGY: 14th Century: from Latin, from Greek alopekia, originally: mange in foxes, from alopex fox]
Do you know any other words that use this root?
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#121839 - 02/01/04 12:28 PM
Re: alopecia
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veteran
Registered: 01/06/04
Posts: 1474
Loc: California
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Alopeks 'fox' from *wlp- (*lup-) 'dog-like beast of prey (fox, jackel, wolf)' :- Latin volpes 'fox'. There's another root *wlkwos 'wolf' :- whence Skt vrka 'wolf', lupus (whichis listed as a Sabine loanword), English wolf.
The /w/ sound in Greek is interesting. There used to be a special letter called digamma that looked like an italic capital eff. It stopped being pronounced and used before the classical period. Dropped at the beginnings of words like in alopeks above. There were a couple of other letters in the old Greek alphabet, some of which still appear as numerals (letters in Greek and Phonoecian alphabets doubled as numbers).
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#121840 - 02/01/04 02:58 PM
Re: alopecia
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 06/24/02
Posts: 7184
Loc: Vermont
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italic capital eff=F?
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formerly known as etaoin...
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#121841 - 02/01/04 03:25 PM
Re: alopecia
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veteran
Registered: 01/06/04
Posts: 1474
Loc: California
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italic capital eff=F?
Yeah, that's pretty much how it look. More rounded on the top. It was alled a digamma 'cause it looked like a gamma with a second crossbar. (I'm not sure if it's even in Unicode, but it should be.)
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#121842 - 02/01/04 03:40 PM
Re: alopecia
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veteran
Registered: 01/06/04
Posts: 1474
Loc: California
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I see that Unicode has both upper- and lowercase digamma (0x03dc and 0x03dd), as well as qoppa (0x03dec and 0x03df) and sampi (0x03e0 and 0x03e1). I'll try pasting them in as XML entities, but that might not work: Ϝ, ϝ, Ϟ, ϟ, Ϡ, ϡ. (I only see the capital versions in my browser.) The URL below has the PDF for this section of Unicode and includes Coptic letters, too. http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0370.pdf
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#121844 - 02/01/04 06:37 PM
Re: it's all greek to me...
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 01/18/01
Posts: 13858
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Wenige wissen wieviel man wissen muss, um zu wissen wie wenig man weiss.
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#121845 - 02/01/04 06:44 PM
Re: it's all greek to me...
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 06/24/02
Posts: 7184
Loc: Vermont
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"Few know how much one to know must, around to know as few one white." cool. 
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formerly known as etaoin...
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#121849 - 02/02/04 08:40 AM
Re: it's all elementary to me...
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 01/18/01
Posts: 13858
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It's sure luck to find anything alimentary on a Mc
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#121850 - 02/02/04 08:59 AM
Re: it's all elementary to me...
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 06/24/02
Posts: 7184
Loc: Vermont
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miserable attempt
yup. that'd be the one. I couldn't find my usual translator page, so I resorted to Sherlock. woeizmi...
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