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>>consider the stars<<

From dic.com:

[Middle English consideren, from Old French, from Latin cnsderre : com-, intensive pref.; see com- + sdus, sder-, star.]

I prefer to think this refers to science than to superstition.


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And while we are on the subject of the unexpectedly arcane etymologies to everyday words [?], can anyone explain why the word "read" has its root in "rædan", "raden" and "raten" (respectively, Germanic, Dutch and German) which makes a reader, roughly "an interpreter of dreams" ?

Is this some throwback to a mantic use of the written word?

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why the word "read" has its root in "rædan", "raden" and "raten" (respectively, Germanic, Dutch and German) which makes a reader, roughly "an interpreter of dreams."

I'm not sure about oneiromantic etymologies, but according to Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch, Rat 'council, advice' and raten 'to advise, give council' occur in most of the Germanic languages. There's even a Gothic verb, garedan 'Vorsorge treffen / to look ahead, provide for risk'. He ties in raten and lesen with unravelling (lit. unriddling) the runes / "die Runen enträtseln". German lesen, like Latin lego and Gk λεγω lego (and λογος logos 'word; reason', but translated by the Romans as ratio 'reckoning') have primary meanings of gathering together. Sounds partially like augury, or later on, hermeneutics, to me. There's also some connection between counting, recounting, telling a tale, and gathering knowledge or portents about the future: cf. English tell, tale, and German zahlen 'to pay', zählen 'to count', and erzählen 'to tell'. Also, the German word for letters of the alphabet Buchstabe where the morpheme Stab means a kind of wand or staff. Kluge mentions that Tacitus, in the 10th chapter of Germania describes how Germans made marks on twigs and threw them (like the I Ching?), interpreting the results, and connects this with runes.




Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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>> oneiromantic<<

Sorry to keep asking what's that; but what's that? Can't find nothing helpful.


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from OneLook:

Quick definitions (oneiromancy)
noun: divination through the interpretation of dreams




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Oneiromancy is the practice of predicting the future through dream analysis.


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What he said. Gk ονειρος (oneiros) 'dream' + μαντεια (manteia) 'divination' (fr. μαντευομαι (manteuomai) 'to divine, prophesy'. English praying mantis is a praying 'prophet, seer, foreboder, presager'.



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You bros are the boss, I say the boss, the Boss Bros., bros.


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and, just in case you're wondering, no relation to

manticore
c.1300, from L. manticora, from Gk. mantikhoras, corruption of martikhoras, said to be from an O.Pers. word for "man eater," cf. martiya- "man" + root of khvar- "to eat." Fabulous monster with the body of a lion, head of a man, porcupine quills, and tail or sting of a scorpion.

from etymonline.com



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#147647 09/10/05 05:21 PM
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Sexual politics is written all over the text. And there is also, and relatedly, a sense that the text is reaching for something which cannot be said, yet which we cannot bring ourselves to pass over in silence - a little like the fourth guest who never appears. The literary figures of speech, the tropes in the text, are especially disconcerting in the passages, halfway through the dialogue, concerning something called khora (spelled: chi, omega, rho, alpha), which means - roughly - space or place. The Greek word has femine gender, and this is played up to the hilt - very off-puttingly, it must be said, for those of us who are tired of sexist stereotypes of Woman. Khora is the womb within which the ideal forms or essences are to be imprinted, when the visible world is created under the guidance of an intelligible plan. Being the receptacle for all essences, khora can have no essence of her own; but for Plato that means that the word "khora" can be given no definition - so no wonder Timaeus finds it difficult to talk about her! As Derrida says of the khora, "the question of essence no longer has any meaning with regard to it. Not having an essence, how could the khora be [se tiendrait-elle] beyond its name?" (Derrida, 1995, p.94) Khora is, as it were, concealed behind a veil of femine mystique. And yet, although she lacks any essence or form, khora is incapable of embodying the ideal forms without distortion - and indeed she is not always completely passive as she receives the forms. Shortcomings in the world which comes into being are to be traced not to flaws in the (masculine) plan, but to deficiencies in the (feminine) khora within which this plan must be executed.

http://snipurl.com/hkv7

Related to same "to eat?"



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