Forging Ancient Greek Words in Modern Times Onofrio Vox The

Forging Ancient Greek Words in Modern Times

Onofrio Vox

The ancient Greek language really isn’t dead: its plurimillenary existence continues not only in medieval and modern Greek languages, but also outside the Hellenophone geographical area, in the various modern Euro- pean languages – French, English, German, Spanish, Italian – often acting within them or in combination with the Latin language or through its filter.1 The vitality of ancient Greek within modern languages occurs in “onomaturgy,” i.e., the making of names,2 especially, as well known, in science, or rather in the sciences, both natural and human: with an obvi- ous or hidden influence, either through direct or indirect loans (semantic calques) or through coinages, whether of words or of whole semantic families, made on the basis of old linguistic material. If we consider the phenomenon from the ancient language’s point of view, the loans should be evaluated as “true graecisms,” and vice versa the coinages as “false graecisms.” Where words that are old but have been recycled in modernity with an entirely or partly new meaning (semantic coinages), these should be considered “false graecisms.” Two striking examples are the semantic families of anthropology3 and of biology.4 Here

1 This was recalled with precision and breadth of documentation by Rodríguez Adra- dos (2005): 270 ff. For the influence of Greek on modern European languages, it is also important to take into account the collection by Munske–Kirkness (1996), and in particular for the Italian and German languages respectively the studies by Janni (1987) and Eisenberg (2011). A list of graecisms in modern languages can be found on the internet at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Greek_loanwords (consulted 01.27.2012). Cf. Hog- ben (1970), which serves as handbook for the creation of modern scientific terminology, providing a kind of grammar as well as a bilingual dictionary, English and Greek-Latin; Kytzler–Redemund–Eberl (20073), a voluminous dictionary of Greek words used in modern German, usually in composition, followed by a list of modern terms, annotated and analysed for components. 2 See Migliorini (1975): 2 ff. 3 In ancient times we only meet the nomen agentis ἀνθρωπολόγος, “speaking of man, i.e., fond of personal conversation, Arist. EN 1125a5” (LSJ: 141), and the verb ἀνθρωπολογεῖν, “describe or represent in the form of man, Ph. 1.282: Pass., ib. 181” (LSJ: ibid.). For modern history of the semantic family see Janni (1987): 13–21. 4 The abstract noun is non-existent in ancient times, while the verb βιολογεῖσθαι, “Pass., to be sketched from life, esp. common life, τὰ βιολογούμενα Longin. 9.15” (LSJ: 316), the wide- spread nomen agentis βιολόγος, “kind of mimic actor or mime” (LSJ, Rev. Suppl.: 69), and the adjective βιολογικός, only with reference to κωμῳδίαι, “= μῖμοι, Suid. s.v. Φιλιστίων” (LSJ: 284 onofrio vox

I point out a handful of modern coinages, of various importance, but all instructive in terms of genesis and diffusion mechanisms.

1. The term epistemology was coined in 1854 by the Scottish philoso- pher James Frederick Ferrier (1808–64)5 in the Institutes of Metaphysic: The Theory of Knowing and Being, p. 46: “the doctrine or theory of knowing . . . (λόγος τῆς ἐπιστήμης – the science of true knowing)”; and he also introduced, on p. 51, agnoiology, “the theory of ignorance (λόγος τῆς ἀγνοίας, the theory of true ignorance).” Ferrier, presenting epistemology as a polar opposite term to ontology,6 knew exactly what he meant, as a specialist who oversaw a well-loved course Lectures on Greek Philosophy, published posthumously along with Other Philosophical Remains (Edinburgh and London, 1866, 18882). For both coinages, epistemology and agnoiology, he noted, as we have seen, the ancient Greek component words which he assumed to be the basis for the term he composed. But in fact the second component word’s group is never attested in ancient times, whereas the first (λόγος τῆς ἐπιστήμης), however rare, can be found in imperial age prose, especially in the later commentators on Aristotle and Plato, with whom Ferrier had particular familiarity.7 It comes as no surprise, then, that the new term epistemology achieved immediate success, unlike agnoiology: both because he pre- sented its meaning clearly and also because he gave an expected name to an insistent cultural phenomenon of the nineteenth-century scientific world, the reflexive study of mechanisms of knowledge associated with the search for new knowledge itself.

316) are attested. Thus, so far does it diverge from usage in ancient Greek, the modern semantic family of biology (a term that appears in 1686 with the meaning, however rare, of biography, and since 1766 as a branch of science) in effect constitutes a series of “false friends.” Unless indicated otherwise, I draw information concerning modern words from the OED. 5 See the short note by Fanfani (1976): 90. 6 This is really another “false graecism” because it is only attested since 1613, even if written in Greek characters in Rodolphus Goclenius, Lexicon philosophicum, clave quo tanquam philosophiae aperiuntur fores, Francofurti 1613: 16, in the entry abstractio, annotated “philosophia de ente.” The term spread first in the “international” Latin form, e.g., in J. Clauberg, Metaphysica, 1646 (see Migliorini [1975]: 77), then in the national languages: English ontology 1663, French ontologie 1692, German Ontologie about 1764, in Italian 1739. 7 E.g., Procl. in Plat. Alcib. i 154, 6, and in Plat. rem publicam I, 22.15, and I, 264.1; Simplic. in Arist. categ. VIII 86.20 = Anon. in Arist. cat. 12.17 cf. earlier Phil. Quod deterius potiori insidiari soleat 25.