Category: Modern Greek

In two previous posts, I had gone through the Golden Treasury of Anglo-Greek Expressions (GTAGE) approach to Alexis Tsipras’ odd translation of the Greek saying We’ve eaten the donkey—and the tail has been left over for us. (Or: We’ve gone and eaten a donkey; are we to get stuck on the tail?) as There is […]

I’ve just discussed Kostas Karapotosoglou’s proposed Greek etymology for μουνί “cunt”, which he advanced in 2008 as an alternative to both the problematic Greek proposals to date, and the Italian proposals to date, which Italians themselves are not enthusiastic enough (although Tasos Kaplanis has argued for one here.) In the Italian proposal article, I noted […]

I’d mentioned in the previous post that Italianists, at least, believe that Venetian monín “cunt” derives from Greek μουνί “cunt”, rather than vice versa. We know that the word was current in both Venetian and Greek at the same time, and in fact it had made it into the Mediterranean Lingua Franca, as monín de […]

In Etymologies and attestation of μουνί, I had reviewed the proposed etymologies of Modern Greek μουνί “cunt”. By far the easiest course would have been to derive μουνί from Venetian monín “cunt”; but it turns out that the Venetian word likely originates from the Greek, rather than vice versa. The etymologies I reviewed were listed […]

My friend from Quora Vangelis Lolos pointed out to me on Facebook that the Modern Greek version of the Old Irish joke about the three friars doesn’t sound as awesome as the others. Challenge Accepted. Τρεις καλόγεροι αναχωρούν από τον κόσμο. Καταφεύγουν στην ερημιά, για να τους δώσει ο Κύριος άφεση των αμαρτιών τους. Για […]