Observations on words
[From some thoughts while slightly inebriated, last night]
The news story of the apocalyptic carp - the one which started to spout revelations in Hebrew in New York - was described as "ichthyological theology," that is, Deus ex Piscem. In Hebrew one may refer to this as "Torah min hamayim" - Torah from the waters, as opposed to the more common Torah min shamayim, coming from the skies. (This is because "sky" - "shamayim" is actually a degenerated compound word, "sham-mayim": there-water. "Sun" - "shemesh" - similarly degenerates from "sham-esh," there-fire. This is a very old degeneration, probably predating Hebrew)
Ichthyological theology should not be confused with eschatological scatology ("Oh, shit. There goes the planet.") nor scatological eschatology. ("Well, the world seems to be going to shit today...")
On the subject of other word constructions, as I was discussing with
hansandersen and
doublefeh on the way home last night, Greek particles are fun. And there are some words that need to come into more widespread use: not just mythology but logomythy, the lore of learning, the secrets I tell my students about how to survive in physics; topology and topography need to be supplemented by topomythy, place-lore, not just an area knowledge but the stories of a locale; similarly mythography, the charting of legends, which keeps track of the ley lines and so on, and its linguistic dual graphomythy, the lore of mapmaking.
English is a great language.
Correction: It occurs to me that logomythy shouldn't be the lore of study, but word-lore itself: that is, the content of this posting.
OK, I need to stop trying to avoid work now.
