Your Greek Word On A Sunday Emmanuela Lia
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- Education
Bite size podcast. Every Sunday, Greek words used in the English language. Travelling words connecting cultures.
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Episode 255: Mania
(Intro & piano music)From Greek Mythology to Euripides's Greek Drama 'The Bacchae' to Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Neil Gaiman's 'The Sandman' , those Nymphs were responsible for drinking, dancing, eating raw meat, being strong enough to pull trees from the ground with, just, their hands and killing anyone who'd refuse their mating call. They followed and worshiped Dionysus from Greece to India and back and they were in the hundreds! Their name Μαινάδες (Maenads) means 'obsessively passio...
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Episode 254: Energy
(Intro & piano music)Εν (en) in Greek is a preposition meaning 'with' 'within' . Εργο (ergo) means 'action'. The translation into Latin show some bumps along the way caused by many back and forths because of a misunderstanding on one of Aristotle's works. He used the combined word, meaning 'at work' as 'powering up' so although in modern Greek the adjective 'ενεργός' (energos) means 'active', 'at work', the noun has two meanings 'action' and ΕΝΕΡΓΕΙΑ/ENERGYTwitter @yourgreeksunday , Insta...
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Episode: 253: Analogy
(Intro & piano music)Greek Mathematicians were the first to use this word until Plato came along and used it to describe different realities and bigger ideas. Ανά (ana) is a preposition meaning -among other things- 'upon'. Λόγος (logos) means 'speech', 'thought', 'reason' and 'ratio' . The combined word means 'according to ratio' and is used for literal or metaphorical proportions. ΑΝΑΛΟΓΙΑ/ANALOGYTwitter @yourgreeksunday , Instagram @emmanuela_lia ,email yourgreeksunday@gmail.com
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Episode 252: Heresy
(Intro & piano music)Plato wrote 'Our salvation depends on the correct choice between pleasure and sadness, that is the choice between more, or less.' The ancient Greek verb Αιρώ (aero) has been completely claimed by Christianity and turned on its head with regards to the original meaning and perception of the word. In 380 AD, the Roman emperor Theodosius the 1st , legally tied the word to anyone not Christian (at the time the division between the Catholic and the Orthodox church didn't e...
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Episode 251: Charisma
(Intro & piano music)In ancient Greek mythology there are three women (sometimes more) , daughters of Zeus (sometimes of the Sun or of Dionysus) that are responsible for organising all the feasts in Mount Olympus and making sure that everything is beautiful, joyous, healthy and sexy. No, they're not the Muses although, they were all good friends. They are Aphrodite's followers and they are The Graces! Χάριτες (Charites) in Greek. Their names Αγλαϊα (Aglaea-Radiance), Ευφροσύνη(Evfrosini-J...
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Episode 250: Idiosyncrasy
(Intro & piano music)I have a three combo word for you today, yup, that's as Greek as it gets! And it seems to have been distorted a little in English in order to single out personality traits but: Ιδιος (idios) in ancient Greek meant 'one's own', we could say 'one's self' but... mmm... ok let's go with that! Συν (sin) means 'with' and κράση (krasi) means 'a mixture' . So the combination of all the things that make someone themselves. From your personality, to your mannerisms, to the way ...