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#121838 02/01/04 05:14 PM
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wwh Offline OP
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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?


#121839 02/01/04 05:28 PM
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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).


#121840 02/01/04 07:58 PM
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italic capital eff=F?



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#121841 02/01/04 08:25 PM
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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.)


#121842 02/01/04 08:40 PM
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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



#121843 02/01/04 09:57 PM
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thanks, jheem. wow. there's so much I never knew I didn't know...



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#121844 02/01/04 11:37 PM
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Wenige wissen wieviel man wissen muss, um zu wissen wie wenig man weiss.


#121845 02/01/04 11:44 PM
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"Few know how much one to know must, around to know as few one white."

cool.




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#121846 02/02/04 12:43 AM
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as few one white

Whadjoo, cygne, get that from Babelfish?


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Sherlock, my dear Watson...





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