The Greek & Latin Roots of English (27 page)

Compared to What?

The comparative and superlative forms of Latin adjectives can also have English derivatives.

The preceding adjectives are irregular in the formation of their comparative and superlative forms; the regular superlative ending is -issimus (-issima, -issimum). How does that ending appear in the various Romance languages?

It's My Fault

If you need to apologize, but want to show off at the same time, you can always say
mea culpa
.

No, It's Not

The legal term
non compos mentis
can be applied to mentally ill individuals who do not have the capacity to reason or to manage one's affairs. It is sometimes used as a defense argument for a plea that the defendant cannot be held legally responsible for his actions.

non compos mentis
= not of sound mind

Footnotes

1
.
Mens, mentis
survives in the Romance languages as an adverbial ending—e.g.,
dolcemente
(Italian),
dulcimente
(Spanish), and
doucement
(French), all of which mean “sweetly,” are derived from the Latin phrase
dulci mente
(“with a sweet mind”).

2
. There are no English derivatives from the Greek word for son or daughter.

THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Triumphal arch of the emperor Septimius Severus (Rome). Septimius Severus ruled 193–211 CE.

Homo sum. Humani nihil a mē alienum puto
.
“I am human. I think that nothing human is strange to me.”

TERENCE (second-century BCE Roman comic playwright),
The Self-Tormentor

THEORY AND PRACTICE

In most college and university catalogs, the departments of political science and psychology can be found under the heading of the social sciences, those disciplines whose practitioners observe, analyze, and formulate theories about the behavior of people in specific groups and situations, individuals in their relationship to others, and the etiology of other kinds of social phenomena. Some of the social sciences are relatively new—the term
sociology
was first used to mean the scientific study of society in the early nineteenth century—while others, such as anthropology, have their roots in the ancient Greek curiosity about the non-Greek world.

ANTHROPOLOGY

It is clear that the most gold by far is in the northern part of Europe, but how it is obtained, I can not say with certainty. It is said that the one-eyed Arimaspians steal it from the griffins; but I do not believe in one-eyed men who in all other ways are like the rest of men
.

HERODOTUS (fifth-century BCE Greek historian),
Inquiries
iii.116

Anthropology is the study of human culture in all its aspects: social organization, economic and political systems, linguistics, and prehistory. Although the ancient Greeks were intensely curious about the customs and practices of non-Greeks (whom they lumped together under the general heading of βάρβαροι), it was not until the eighteenth century that the modern discipline of anthropology began to take shape. In part, it found its intellectual origins in the ideal of the European Enlightenment— one that emphasized “reason” over tradition and taught that scientific methods could be applied to the study of human society—and in part through colonialism, which brought Europeans into direct contact with the cultures of North and South America, Africa, and Asia. It was believed by these earliest practitioners of the discipline that the origins of the structures of “modern” European society could be understood by exploring those of the cultures that they considered to be less developed, or even “primitive.”

SOCIOLOGY

Culture is roughly anything we do that monkeys don't
.

Attributed to Lord Raglan, a nineteenth-century British general

Sociology, yet another product of the Enlightenment, had its origins in the attempt to apply the rational methodology of the natural sciences to the study of the social lives of people, groups, and societies. Today the discipline focuses on the study of social behavior through the empirical and systematic examination of social institutions and organizations that influence human action and cultural identity.

For if it were proposed to all peoples to choose the best customs out of all, after close examination, they would each choose their own as best
.

HERODOTUS (fifth-century BCE Greek historian),
Inquiries
iii.38

Utopia

The social sciences sometimes make a claim for the relevance and applicability of their models to the solution of human social problems. Nevertheless, despite the efforts of sociologists, political theorists, economists, and other social thinkers, we are still faced with the paradox that our scientific study of human behavior, in all its forms, has not yet produced the ideal society. Perhaps, sadly, the sixteenth-century philosopher Sir Thomas More was correct in calling his ideal society
Utopia
.

ECONOMICS

He thought that there was no other kind of enjoyment of riches and money than extravagance, and that only stingy and despicable men kept a correct account of what they spent, while fine and truly great men wasted and squandered
.

SUETONIUS (first-century CE),
Life of the Emperor Nero

Although the ownership of real property remained the aristocratic standard of wealth until the end of antiquity, as early as the second millennium BCE, Greek merchants grew prosperous by trading with the various peoples who lived around the shores of the Mediterranean, while Greek adventurers who had hired themselves out as mercenaries brought back some of the remarkable wares of Egypt and the East. Some historians have suggested that the Trojan War, far from being a battle over the beautiful Helen, was actually a struggle over competing economic spheres of influence. The high finances of bonds, stock options, and mergers and acquisitions may have been unknown to the Greeks and the Romans, but lucrative trade, commerce, and speculative investment flourished in the classical world.