Last night was the last lunar eclipse until 2010. It happened so slowly, at any given moment it looked like the moon in a different phase. Except towards the end, when it turned an eerie dull red, then the color of old paper. Beautiful.
Eclipse is from the Greek ekleipsis, which as a noun meant an eclipse, but as a verb meant "I cease to exist" or "I leave." We no longer believe the moon leaves the sky during an eclipse, as the ancient Greeks once did (no Thessalian witches for us). In 1280, when the first uses of "eclipse" were recorded in English, most of Europe still believed that the moon was being consumed or evicted from the sky. As scientific understanding has changed, so has our metaphoric use of the word. Now, eclipse as a verb means "to take the place of" or "to push out of the spotlight." I can't think of other words where the advent of scientific understanding has changed the meaning without changing the word itself.
Anyone have other examples?
Bonus scrabble word: syzygy! "A kind of unity, especially through coordination or alignment, most commonly used in the astronomical and/or astrological sense." Used to describe the position of the Earth between the moon and the light of the sun. From the Greek for "yoked together" and...
    Worth 25 points! |
Also, many thanks to Seed Magazine for linking to me.
7 comments:
Except there are only two "y" tiles in scrabble.
I found our blog through the Seed Zeitgeist, and it's made my day. I love it! It's the kind of blog I've always wanted to make but never got to. Words intrigue me too.
Oh and science is scattered with no dearth of terminology hangups. 'Ether' for one. Darwin's 'hypothesis'. An 'atom' is supposed to be an indivisible particle-it isn't.
Thank you so much Anne! I need to take more science classes. I'm kicking myself for my liberal arts education, daily.
And it's true Matthew - you have to use one of the blank tiles. Or cheat. Whatever inflates your dinghy. :)
'planet' - originally meant 'wandering star' (because, as foreground objects, they move around against the background of the constellations). The modern definition is entirely in terms of their physical nature, rather than their behaviour on the sky.
Good one Alec, thanks!
Syzygy -- it's also used in biology to indicate when a male and female organism merge into each other and become a single organism. It's kind of like sex, but with only one person leaving the room. Some parasites do this, which is how I know about it. I'm not sure if has caught on with other organisms.
Your local friendly microbiologist!
Also Hugh -- when are you visiting Texas?
So Eric, you're saying that when you have sex, both people survive? Huh. Maybe I've been doing something wrong...
Also, I will visit Texas when:
a) a ticket to Austin falls out of the sky and in to my lap; or
b) Austin becomes a borough of NYC.
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