Athlete

We're celebrating / protesting / drawing attention to the Beijing Olympics a little bit early here at Word Nerd. The torch just touched down in San Francisco today, so it seems appropriate.

Athlete, or I should say its pronunciation as ath-uh-leet, is a pet peeve of mine. Has been ever since my high school Latin teacher drew attention to it. She explained it as compensatory lengthening, or the brain shoving a vowel in between two many consonants in a row.

Regardless of how you pronounce it, Athlete derives from the Greek athletes, or contestant in a game, related to the Greek athlon, a prize. This means regardless of what they told you in elementary school, it is all about winning.

Olympic

Continuing on the same tip as yesterday, I always believed that "Olympic" came from the home of the Greek gods, Mount Olympus. I figured they involved incredible, almost Godlike athletes, or something.

Nope.

The Olympics actually take there name from Olympos/Olympia, a town and district within Ancient Greece, where the original Olympics to honor Zeus were held. Mount Olympus, on the other hand, actually referred to several different mountains in Thessaly, each thought to be the highest in the region.

Torch

Protesters have been disrupting the passage of the Olympic torch on its way through Europe towards China. Their have been incidents in both France & London now, in an effort to draw attention towards China's terrible actions around Tibet.

Etymologically, this is quite fitting. Torch comes from the Old French torche, which meant "twisted thing" (ultimately from the Latin torquere to twist). Twisted thing is an apt description of Chinese policy towards Tibet. If your knowledge of Tibetan-Chinese history mostly concerns the 1990s concert and a lot of college hippies wearing "Free Tibet" buttons, check out this useful Q&A.

Tropic

I saw the revival of South Pacific a few weeks ago, and though I enjoyed it, I didn't think it was incredible. Good acting, fun songs, interesting plot (especially for the time), but predictable in its failures - both political and literary.

But people are loving it. This review even sees it as a sign of a turn in the current trend of big Broadway shows - a move back to the unironic. Appropriately, the word tropic comes from the Greek, tropikos, which meant of or pertaining to a turn (or the solstice, the moment when the sun turns back to the Earth).

I don't buy it, though. Perhaps if we were seeing new blockbuster musicals with an earnest sensibility, but this seems to me like another example of Broadway's endless nostalgia. Nostalgia for the earnest is not an embrace of the earnest itself.

Mortgage

Pretty much all words with the prefix "mort" scare me. Like the name Mortimer. Death-by-sea? What kind of name is that? Death-by-sea Jones. There's a kid destined to be teased. And DIE.

But mortgages scare me not just etymologically. From the French mort gaige (or dead pledge), it signifies an inescapable deal, which ends (dies) only when the debt is paid - either through money or foreclosure on your collateral. As is happening more and more in this country.

Even to those who are making their payments, however, owning property can seriously hold you down - look at these people stuck with homes they aren't able to sell.

Thankfully, I don't make enough to own anything worth mortgaging, unless people will take my kidneys as collateral. Someday, I'm sure they will.

Olympic

Continuing on the same tip as yesterday, I always believed that "Olympic" came from the home of the Greek gods, Mount Olympus. I figured they involved incredible, almost Godlike athletes, or something.

Nope.

The Olympics actually take there name from Olympos/Olympia, a town and district within Ancient Greece, where the original Olympics to honor Zues were held. Mount Olympus, on the other hand, actually referred to several different mountains in Thessaly, each thought to be the highest in the region.

Olympic

Continuing on the same tip as yesterday, I always believed that "Olympic" came from the home of the Greek gods, Mount Olympus. I figured they involved incredible, almost Godlike athletes, or something.

Nope.

The Olympics actually take there name from Olympos/Olympia, a town and district within Ancient Greece, where the original Olympics to honor Zues were held. Mount Olympus, on the other hand, actually referred to several different mountains in Thessaly, each thought to be the highest in the region.