Classics 22: Etymology

1. Why are the 'cardinal' and 'ordinal' numbers so called?  cardinal are "hinge" numbers (chief, important)

2. 1. cardinal is from cardo meaning hinge: so the cardinals are the hinge numbers, the numbers all other numbers hinge upon?
   2. maybe, but already in Latin the 4 directions were called cardinal directions, and so, perhaps, the reason for using this root is lost to us in the mists of time. But perhaps it is simply that they are the hinge numbers.
   3. 'ordinal' on the other hand is easy: Latin ordo, ordinis means 'order' and the ordinal numbers put things in order (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.), so the etymon's connection to the English word is clear meaningwise as well as formwise.

   
   
3. Hints for filling in the right-hand column above: 
   
   
• Have fun: try to find out-of-the-way derivatives.
  
• Feel free to use words in the exercises below!
  
• -ad, -arch(y), -gon, -hedr-, and -meter are often combined with numbers.
  
  
4. Look up and differentiate between the following:
   
   
• monotheism
• polytheism
• henotheist
• hylozoism: idea that matter is somehow alive: cf. hylopsychism (the idea that matter possesses a mind):
  
• animism (usually a specific divine being in a specific bit of matter):
  
• panpsychism (everything has a soul)
  
• atheism
• anthropotheism : gods originated as men or are essentially human in nature
  
• autotheism: the doctrine that god is self-existent: self-worship
  
• bitheism same as next
  
• ditheism: belief in two gods (a good one and an evil one is the most common variety)
  
• dyotheism: same as above
  
• tritheism: Christian doctrine that Father, son, and Holy Spirit are three separate gods
  
• tetratheism: Christian doctrine of trinity Plus divine essence
  
• pantheism: the universe as a whole is god
  
• cosmotheism: same as above
  
• panentheism: the world is part of but not all of god's being
  
• psychotheism: god is pure spirit
  
• zootheism: belief in animal gods
  
  
5. Why is there no Greek word for "zero"? Look up the etymologies of the following words:
   
   
• zero
• From Wikipedia on Zero: the Persian encyclopedist Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khwarizmi, in his "Keys of the Sciences", remarked that if, in a calculation, no number appears in the place of tens, a little circle should be used "to keep the rows". This circle the Arabs called صفر ṣifr, "empty". That was the earliest mention of the name ṣifr that eventually became zero.
• Italian zefiro already meant "west wind" from Latin and Greek zephyrus; this may have influenced the spelling when transcribing Arabic صِفْرṣifr.[7] The Italian mathematician Fibonacci (c.1170–1250), who grew up in North Africa and is credited with introducing the decimal system to Europe, used the term zephyrum. This became zefiro in Italian, which was contracted to zero in Venetian.
  
• As the decimal zero and its new mathematics spread from the Arab world to Europe in the Middle Ages, words derived from صِفْر ṣifr and zephyrus came to refer to calculation, as well as to privileged knowledge and secret codes. According to Ifrah, "in thirteenth-century Paris, a 'worthless fellow' was called a '... cifre en algorisme', i.e., an 'arithmetical nothing'."[7] From ṣifr also came French chiffre = "digit", "figure", "number", chiffrer = "to calculate or compute", chiffré = "encrypted". Today, the word in Arabic is still ṣifr, and cognates of ṣifr are common in the languages of Europe and southwest Asia.
• The Hindu-Arabic numerals and the positional number system were introduced around 500 AD in Hindu speaking lands. In 825 AD,  that Persian scientist, al-Khwārizmī (780-850) wrote about it in his book on arithmetic. This book synthesized Greek and Hindu knowledge and also contained his own fundamental contribution to mathematics and science including an explanation of the use of zero.
  It was only centuries later, in the 12th century, that the Arabic numeral system was introduced to the Western world through Latin translations of his Arithmetic.
  
• cipher
• algebra
• from Arabic al-jabr, الجبر "restoration"
  
• its roots can be traced to earlier traditions, most notably ancient Indian mathematics, a direct influence on Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (c. 780–850). He learned Indian mathematics and introduced it to the Muslim world through his Book on Addition and Subtraction after the Method of the Indians and The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing
• roots of algebra can be traced to the ancient Babylonians,[6] who developed formulas to calculate solutions for problems typically solved today by using linear equations, quadratic equations, and indeterminate linear equations.
  
• Egyptians of this era, as well as Greek and Chinese mathematicians in the 1st millennium BC, usually solved such equations by geometric methods, such as those described in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, Euclid's Elements, and The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art. The geometric work of the Greeks, typified in the Elements of Euclid, provided the framework for generalizing formulae beyond the solution of particular problems into more general systems of stating and solving equations, though this would not be realized until the medieval Muslim mathematicians.
  
• average
• The beginnings (c. 1500) of the word 'average' is "damage sustained at sea". The root is found in Arabic transliterated as awar, in Italian as avaria, in French as avarie and in Dutch as averij. Hence an average adjuster is a person who assesses an insurable loss.
  Marine damage is either particular average, which is borne only by the owner of the damaged property, or general average, where the owner can claim a proportional contribution from all the parties to the marine venture. The type of calculations used in adjusting general average gave rise to the use of "average" to mean "arithmetic mean".
  
• algol
• from Arabic رأس الغول ra's al-ghūl : 'the head (ra's) of the ogre' (al-ghūl) (see "ghoul"; as an eclipsing binary, the star would undergo regular changes in brightness), which was given from its position in the constellation Perseus, representing the head of Gorgon Medusa. The English names of Demon Star and Blinking Demon are direct translations.[14] In Hebrew folklore it was known as Rōsh ha Sāṭān 'Head of Satan',
  
• algorithm
• comes from the name Al-Khwārizmī (c. 780-850), a Persian mathematician, astronomer, geographer and a scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, whose name means "the native of Kharazm", a city that was part of Greater Iran during his era and now is in modern day Uzbekistan
  
  
• Why do we have "Arabic numerals"?
• Does Arabic currently use "Arabic numerals"?
  
  
6. Identify the etymological elements of hecatomb, polyp, and ink. What is the phenomenon those words share called? Can you think of further examples of it?
   
   
7. Investigate the etymologies of the following:
   
   

   diatom: cut through dia + tom: microscopic critters	migraine: hemicranium half-skull	monolith one-stone
   pentathlon five-prize-thing	decathlete ten-prize-agent	octagon 8-knee/angle
   diphycercal: a fish tail arrangement: lungfish have it: even tail top and bottom	protocol:first glued sheet of a papyrus role	triglyph 3-carving
   decade < L < Gk dekas	heptahedron	myriapod 10,000-foot
   pentecost: 50th: 7th sunday after Easter	tesseract: 4 rayed: four dimensional analogue of a cube	kilogram 1000-writing
   hyphen	diatessaron:  a harmony of the four Gospels edited and arranged into a single connected narrative thru 4	chiliad 1000-some (as in 'foursome,' 'threesome')
   hendiadys:  one-thru-two this is the figure of speech which uses a pairing to identify one thing, as in "nice and warm," or "wind and weather" or "country and western"	trapeze: ultimately probably from tetra+ pous four-foot	deuterium: tritium isotope of hydrogen (deuterium has a neutron + a proton)(tritium has 2 neutrons plus a proton) secont-thing, third-thing
   triskaidekaphobia three-and-ten-fear-abstraction	adelphic: old Gk form for one + delph (womb)	hectare hect+ are (from area)
   hentriacontane: 31 carbons in its molecule	unnilpentium: element with atomic number 105	icosasphere
   heneicosane: 21 carbons in its molecule	dean: from french: chief of ten.	deuteranopia: secondary lack of sight: red-green blindness: there is also protanopia
   triakisoctahedrom: a trisoctahedron whose faces are triangles: a trisoctahedron is a 24 faced solid made up of octahedrons	epitrite on-third-e	hapax one-time used for a word that only occurs once, like UVM-ification: never will be used again!
   trichotomy thrice-cut	hemiola: one and a half: a medieval music term: also used of three notes used in place of 2.	dilemma
   tetra: short for tetragonopterus: rectangle wing. a kind of fish, the tetra	tetrapla: a book with four columns each in a different language: also octapla and hexapla	proterozoic first-er-o-life-adjective
   penteconter: 50 (rower ship)	trireme three-oar	protozoic first-o-life-adj.
   eicosapentaenoic: an omega-3 fatty acid, physiologically named 20:5(n-3) (20 carbon chain, what's the 5 for?)	docosahexaenoic: another omega-3 fatty acid with 22 carbons: physiological name 22:6(n-3): -enoic < -ene (unsaturated carbon) + -oic (containing carboxyl)	alpha-linolenic one of two essential fatty acids

   
   
8. What's in a name? Find the meaning of the following and say how it developed (these have nothing to do with numbers):
   
   

   1. huguenot: Hugue Eidgenoss: French protestant: term originated in Switzerland	8. lesbian
   3. vulcanize: ancient Roman god of fire: to treat rubber chemically to make it useful	10. lynch (Capt. William Lynch of Pittsylvania, VA)
   4. magnet ((stone of) Magnesia: town in ancient Asia Minor)	11. sandwich (John Montagu, 4th Earl of sandwich, who spent 24 hours at the gaming table with nothing but meat between bread as food)
   5. maudlin (tearfully emotional: drunkenly emotional (after Magdalene))	12. gerrymander: Elbridge Gerry, governor of Mass: his voting districting was made to look like a sala-mander in a comic
   6. meander (winding river in Asia Minor: near Troy)	13. masochist: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, some of whose fictional characters derived sexual pleasure from pain
   7. solon	14. draconian

   
   
9. What's the difference between a perissodactylous (odd-number of digits) animal and an artiodactylous (even-toed) animal?