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An etymological query. Today's word is monesterous. In reading its etymology, I was struck by the similarity between "oistros" for gadfly/madness in monesterous and "Middle English oistre" in oyster. The two abbreviated etymologies are posted below. Any connection between them? They both have Greek ancestors... Where's a tsuwm, toute suite, when ya' need him? OysterETYMOLOGY: Middle English oistre, from Old French, from Latin ostreum, ostrea, from Greek ostreon. http://www.bartleby.com/61/97/O0209700.htmlMONESTEROUSCombining form mon- (one) from Greek monos, mono- + oistros (gadfly, madness).] http://wordsmith.org/words/today.htmlWordWalrus
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Dear WW: I hate to say it, but I do not think this is one of your inspired guesses.
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Well, drat then, wwh...
...and here I thought the word was my oyster!
(I did look it up as far as I could, and it seems that oyster way back then in its earliest permutations came probably from words having to do with bony/osseous. Don't suppose there are many bony gadflies flitting about...)
WordWossified
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Dear WW: I am quite possibly in error. I was expecting the Lord High Executioner, tsuwm to pronounce judgement. An ancient horrid joke about oysters. A Frenchman walked into an American restaurant, and saw an Irishman looking at a plate of oysters, with a puzzled expression on his face. So the Frenchman asked him "What's the matter?" The Irishman said "How do you eat these things?" "Like this!" and he slurped down one. The Irishman said: "Let's see you do that again!" The Frenchman, enjoying the naivete of the Irishman, gladly repeated the feat until the plate was empty. But the the Frenchman was puzzled by the way the Irishman kept looking at him, and asked:"Why do you look at me like that?" The Irishman replied:
Begorrah, I got them down, but I couldn't keep them down!" By which you can tell I don't like them.
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wwh, I, too, am in hopes that the Grand Poohbah Walt Word will open this shell...
By the way, one time James Joyce left a bag of oysters on an uncle's stoop--apparently Joyce thought the uncle needed a bit of high-octane fuel to zap his libido...
Best regards,
WordWanna
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If oysters increased the tilt of the kilt, they would have become extinct long ago.
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wwh: Once upon a time when traveling down to Florida, I read in some map notes about something called "The Turtle Mound" on the east coast of Florida. Seems it was a mound of oyster shells. I asked my father could we stop by and find out what was so remarkable about a mound of oyster shells, and he agreed. I couldn't imagine why this mound would have been mentioned in the map notes.
Anyhoo, when we arrived, we saw a huge hill covered with sand, palmetto, Live Oak, and millions of oyster shells that formed it cast there long ago by feasting Seminoles. There was a wooden footpath up the hill, and we hiked to the top. My dad, a man of few words, upon reaching the top, said, "Must have been horny rascals."
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the old greek root of that bring us oyster also brings us ostracize--
i heard the story--(and other can say whether its true or not) that voting greek cities was done by counting the number of voters, and then at election time, a man would toss a small sea shell into a baskets (they had problems counting the shards, not chads.) for yea /nae, dem/rep, whig/tory what ever..
when some one had offened public sensability-- a vote would be called and if lost-- the man could be banished... shells used for voting led to some one being ostracized..
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Dear WW: there used to be very large piles of seashells along the New England seashore, but they were used by colonists long ago to make lime mortar for chimneys.
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Well, wwh, the Turtle Mound oyster shells weren't used for any Seminole mortar that I've heard about.
We have an estate here in Richmond, Virginia, that was a bequest of James Branch Dooley and his wife, Sallie May. The estate, Maymont, during the period the Dooleys lived there, had a long magnolia-lined, oyster shell drive from Hampton Street up to the porte-cochière. The magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora) are still there, heavy-limbed and aching with the passionate beauty they have born, but the oyster shells are no more. A crude asphalt lines the way now, and the magnolias most certainly weep for the loss. One of my fantasies is to imagine being carried along that drive in the moonlight peering through sagging magnolia limbs, and hearing the rush and crunch of wheels over shells, once served from the bounty of the Dooley's grand board. yeah, yeah, I know they didn't eat all those oysters, but it's part of my fantasy. Curiously, the Dooleys had no children.
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that really, truly is a worthless word.
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Your Great Pontsuwminous Self is back!!
And yet no comment on gadflies and bones? Really, tsuwm... wwh and I have been waiting for nearly 24 hours now for your final verdict on the etymology and you just blow in and blow directly out.
Please throw a little gadly bone at least my way--not sure whether wwh is still interested, although mention oysters, and he's sure to appear.
Best regards,
The Walrus
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I was expecting the Lord High Executioner, tsuwm to pronounce judgement.
In The Mikado, dr. bill, Pooh-bah was not the Lord High Executioner; he was the Lord High Everything Else.
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Siss Tsuwm-Bah! Still he remains closed tight as an oyster on the dadburned etymology. Maybe this is one of those teaching strategies to make us go word-spelunking ourselves.
Well, I'll just declare that monosterous and oyster are categorically derived from the same ancesterous word; gadflies and oysters have more in common than most people realize; and oysters are mammals. So there!
The Walrus, seeking a good carpenter to help open up these luctiferous oysters
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::sigh::
windlass, comical and comatose both have Greek roots, why don't you connect those while you're at it?
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In reply to:
i heard the story--(and other can say whether its true or not) that voting greek cities was done by counting the number of voters, and then at election time, a man would toss a small sea shell into a baskets (they had problems counting the shards, not chads.) for yea /nae, dem/rep, whig/tory what ever..
when some one had offened public sensability-- a vote would be called and if lost-- the man could be banished... shells used for voting led to some one being ostracized..
It was bits of broken pottery, called ostrakon in Greek. The Athenians had a custom whereby the citizenry could vote to send anybody into exile for a period of ten years. On polling day each voter wrote on his (no female voters -- what do you think this was, a democracy?) bit of pottery the name of the person who he wanted to send into exile. Whoever got the most votes had to get out of town asap.
Bingley
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Bingley, thanks for sharding some light on the subject.
There must have been a minimum number of shards required for ostracizing, then exiling a citizen.
tsuwm: I'm really not suggesting that because two English words look alike and have similar languages of origin, before assuming current English forms, that there's a connection. What roused my curiosity in the first place was the similarity between the Greek roots, and that's where I wondered were there a connection between those roots. My sources here are limited, at least the ones I currently have. It appears that oyster clearly comes from "bone," but I still don't know where the "osterous" in monosterous comes from if I trace it as far back as I am able. That's why I had hoped for some elucidation from you, who often helps us open recalcitrant oysters here.
Anyway, my curiosity (hmmm, wonder whether that osity was ever related to bones...just kidding, really) is temporarily quiescent, though not ossified, about this matter. I'll bone up on the subject when it flares up again.
Best regards,
WW
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Googling ostracism Athens led me to this site, http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/ostracis.html . The second quotation (headed Philochorus) explains that first they voted on whether to have an ostracism or not, and then on who to ostracise. You had to get a minimum of 6000 votes to be ostracised and then you had 10 days to leave Athens, though you could still receive the income from your property there. The site also has a picture of an ostrakon. Bingley
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>What roused my curiosity in the first place was the similarity between the Greek roots...
which, in turn, roused my gibe. the roots, as you gave, are ostreon and oistros. the roots for comical and comatose are, respectively, komos and koma -- a much closer "pair".
I like to keep in mind that cleave and cleave are not cognates; this keeps me somewhat grounded in my speculations.
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Good site, Bingley. Thanks. Read there the term potsherd, also, for the ostrakon.
tsuwm: Like leitmotifs in opera, there are those verbal ones here that play on the WAD board, cleave and cleave providing one of them, though not a major one. In fact, the various leitmotifs on this board help shape it into a more satisfying whole, to my taste. I will not pursue the shaping of this monosterous one because my guess was just plain incorrect. But, I'll alert you, that sometime, somewhere, and probably often, the etymological road in retrograde will lead me to a common nexus, and that will be fun. Genesis has its own allure. Thanks for explaining your comment about comical and comatose, by the way. Hope I haven't caused you to become comatose. (hmmmm....comatose and tomatoes is awfully close--off to seeks some roots, tra la!)
Best regards,
Dub
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Dear Bingley: I enjoyed the link, particularly the reference to "arete".
"Socrates's primary concern in life was arete 'excellence', not in the Sophistic
sense of practical efficiency in public life, but as moral excellence of soul,
that is, virtue."
I wish we saw more of it today.
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wwh, there will be no verifiable connection here, but I find it whimsically interesting that arete and the French word arrêter (to stop) bear resemblance.
I would think a person who is capable of stopping mentally to make moral considerations could be possessed of this quality of arete. On the other hand, fools rush in and all that jazz. Not too many angels tred the path I follow...
Dub
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Regrettably I have been unable to find a discussion of the qualities subsumed in "arete" But it bothers me to see so many ways in which virtue is mocked in our culture. I was reading TIME tonight, and could only shake my head at a review of three movies featuring human copulation, and contrasting the merits of the way the subject was handled in each of the three. A swamp Yankee farmer I knew said "There ain't no choice in a pig turd." I see no merit in trying to make pornography an art form. Without wanting to sound like an Islamic fundamentalist, I wonder about the future of a nation that scorns virtue, and enriches pornographers.
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