Thank you OED: four < *fowr < Middle English fower < feower < Old English feower forty since 15th century; fourty Middle English up to 17th century < Middle English fourti (and, in parentheses, forti) < feouwerti < Old English feowertig .So the forti spelling was apparently occasional in Middle English, but not regular. This […]
The dirty not-so-secret of Attic Greek typography: it adopts the punctuation and capitalisation conventions of the European-language country it is printed in. So names or adjectives of nationalities (Hellenic/hellenic, Hellene/hellene) will be capitalised based on where it is printed. The quotation marks will follow local practice (and there’s a special place in hell for whoever […]
No. No no no. The Hebrew word ’erabon “pledge” (Strong 6162. עֲרָבוֹן (erabon)) shows up in Greek as arrabōn. In fact, it doesn’t quite: the word was borrowed in Classical times, so it was likely taken from Phoenecian instead. Within Greek, arrabōn ended up meaning “engagement, betrothal”, because a betrothal is a kind of pledge. […]
Let’s collate these responses against Tripoli (disambiguation) from Wikipedia: Tripoli, Libya Tripoli, Lebanon, the second largest city in Lebanon Tripoli, Greece, the capital of Arcadia, Greece Tripolis (Larisaia), an ancient city Tripolis ad Maeandrum, an ancient city on the borders of Lydia, Caria and Phrygia Tripolis (Pontus), an ancient city Tripoli, Iowa, a city in […]
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D6%84%D5%A1%D5%B0%D5%A1%D5%B6%D5%A1%D5%B5#Old_Armenian I know nothing about Armenian, Old or New, apart from vosp, ’cause I like lentil soup. I stared for half an hour at: A Grammatical Sketch of Classical Armenian, Damme, Dirk Van – a Short Classical Armenian Grammar Grammaire armenienne : M. Lauer and A. Carriere . I think I have the answer. Old […]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaphism You’ve linked to (and read) the English language Wikipedia article in the Question Details. From the English and German Wikipedia articles, we actually don’t know anything else about scaphism: it was described once in Plutarch, and then recapitulated in Eunapius and Zonaras, Byzantine sources. We don’t even know if it was something the Persians […]
Parea παρέα in Greek. Cool because it’s the only word in Greek with an Iberian origin. It comes from either Ladino parea or Catalan parella, cognate with Spanish pareja. The Catalan derivation is probably too good to be true: it refers to the Catalan Company, mercenaries who ran bits of Greece (including Athens) in the […]
Half of Greece (the islands) was a colonial outpost for various Italian republics—mostly Venice and Genoa. But that was a very, very long time ago, and Greeks have forgotten that, for example, Cretan villagers welcomed the Ottomans as relief from Venetian feudalism. What was left behind was significant cultural transmission from Italy to Greece: a […]
Bauer’s Lexicon defines ἀρραβών as “payment of part of a purchase price in advance; first installment, deposit, down payment, pledge”. In time, the meaning has shifted to the kind of pledge associated with marriage: a betrothal, an engagement. (Greeks, please do not cite Ancient words with Modern inflections. It’s just confusing to those not as […]
Greeks (OK, Byzantines) gave the Russians Orthodoxy, and feel a bond with them out of that. During Ottoman rule, the Russians saw themselves as the Third Rome—the successor state to Byzantium, which the Greeks felt was their lost empire. The Greeks in turn longed to be rescued by the Russians: Ακόμη τούτην άνοιξη (ραγιάδες, ραγιάδες)τούτο […]