Etymology Thread ( and Entomology)

[Bordertangoman]

One occasionally comes a croos words that are new (to one) and possibly useful:

"Accidie" "A better name for this last vice ( sloth) is Accidie, because in the middle ages the word sloth did not mean simple laziness but was a much more sophisticated psychological concept. In Dante's Inferno for example, Accidie is described as anger turned back on itself to produce totally crippling depression and despair.

Evagrius Ponticus, one of the most formative early medieval spiritual writers, gave a slightly different but also very interesting interpretation. He called Accidie the Devil of the Noonday Sun, because it was the mental vice that made our minds generate all sorts of logical sounding reasons for quitting whatever we were doing, once the sun got hot and we got tired. Accidie was what kept us from ever finishing anything. Evagrius said that this was the most difficult vice of all to deal with, far more difficult than dealing with problems involving sex and anger. " Hindsfoot Foundation on Vices and Virtues

It does strike that after a heavy lunch ( or indeed sex at midday) one really cant be bothered to do anything

"Accidie is an extinct emotion. Dating back to medieval times it was inextricably linked to the cardinal sin of sloth. Accidie referred to what would today be referred to as an approximate mixture of idleness and misery, and was an emotion congruent with the then dominant theological view of the world - it came about when one neglected one's duties to God. This emotion was predicated on the then widely accepted belief that discharging one's duties to God should be a joyful affair. One could not perform ones duties to the Lord out of a sense of measured or reluctant obligation. So even if one's behaviour was suitably unslothful, if one's intentions and sense of joyfulness were not present one could suffer from accidie. (Edwards, 1997)"

its etymology is from latin meaning "without care"

[Bordertangoman]

CATHEXIS:

The usefulness of Cathexis can be seen in how we identify our emotional dance energy on a particluar dance. Probably everyone on this forum Cathects to certain degree.

Pronunciation: kê-thek-sis •
 Noun
Meaning: 1. The focus or direction of emotional energy on a single object, idea, or activity. 2. A fixation or obsession.
Notes: Like all English words ending on -is (basis : bases, crisis : crises), the plural of this word is cathexes [kê-thek-seez].

Psychoanalysts, who define the word slightly differently (the focus of sexual energy), use the verb cathect and the adjective cathetic "related to cathexis", so why shouldn't we?
In Play: A cathexis does not necessarily focus on a fetish; work can be a cathexis if it is carried out with energy redirected from other parts of your life: "I wouldn't say that Sheila loves chocolate but rather that chocolate is the object of a passionate cathexis for her." The object of a strong cathexis, however, may be a fetish: "Sheila cathects accessories the way other women cathect men."
Word History: Today's word is a carbon copy of Greek kathexis "holding, retention" from katekhein "to hold fast", based on the intensive prefix kat(a)- "very (much)" + ekhein "to hold on (to), to keep". A historically related word is eunuch, from Greek eunoukhos, "an unmanned man in charge of the women of a harem", a word that comes from eune "bed" + ekhein "to keep". There is also a possibility that Greek skhole "a rest stop, leisure time", the origin of our word school, is related, with only the [kh] sound of ekhein surviving. If so, attitudes toward schooling would seem to have radically changed since we borrowed it. (If Curtis Simple has a cathexis for words like this, we very grateful to be its beneficiary.)

[elisedance]

Perhapse we need an academics forum....

[Bordertangoman]

Perhapse we need an academics forum....

oh but that would exclude me! how about an auto-didactics thread?

[emeralddancer]

how about a dictionary for us folks that quite didn't make it in academics. LOL

[cornutt]

Is the title of this thread implying that our etymology has bugs in it?     Because I've actually done a bit of work to try to find where the term "bug", meaning a part of a machine or complex system (particularly a software system) that isn't working properly due to some implementation error, entered the English language.  The term is often incorrectly attributed to Admiral Grace Hopper, a pioneer of military computing with the U.S. Navy.  In 1947, while working with the Harvard Mark II electro-mechanical computer, an engineer traced a malfunction to a dead moth caught in a relay.  The moth was taped to the day's lab notebook page with the notation, "First actual case of bug being found".  Hopper often retold the story, but she readily acknolwedged that she was not the person who found the bug, and that she did not invent the term.  Indeed, the wording of the notebook entry shows that the engineers were already familiar with the term, and were making a pun on it regarding the moth.

The Wikipedia entry for "software bug" cites a correspondence written by Thomas Edison in 1878 in which he uses the term.  In the letter, he has to explain it to his correspondent, but his wording indicates that people in his field were familiar with the term.  However, Ada Byron, who did pionnering work on programming methods with Charles Babbage's Engines in the mid-19th century, does not appear to have ever used the term, which is surprising since "bug" is most commonly associated with software nowdays.  But, Byron was a teenage prodigy who never had any formal training in engineering, so it is possible that the term was in use then, but she didn't know it because she had never been exposed to the jargon.

The term appears to have been in common use during WWII, particularly among people who worked with radars and aircraft systems.  Interestingly, I have come across a reference to "bug" in a mid-1960s reference to a race car entered in the Indianapolis 500, at a time when race cars had nothing whatsoever to do with computers (which is certainly not true now).  In the immediate post-war period, a fair number of participants in Indycar racing were people who had either worked with or flew aircraft during the war, so the usage may have leaked over from there.

[Bordertangoman]

perhaps it was a polite way of saying its "Bu**ered" or broken

[Bordertangoman]

To eat humble pie (1830) is from umble pie (1648), pie made from umbles "edible inner parts of an animal" (especially deer), considered a low-class food. The similar sense of similar-sounding words (the "h" of humble was not pronounced then) converged in the pun. Umbles, meanwhile, is M.E. numbles "offal" (with loss of n- through assimilation into preceding article), from O.Fr. nombles "loin, fillet," from L. lumulus, dim. of lumbus "loin."

"Don't be so humble; you're not that great." [Golda Meir]

[Rugby]

Of course, we should have known that. 

[elisedance]

... but we're ever so 'umble...

[elisedance]

nami - wave (japanese)
Tsu - big

you do the numbers

[Bordertangoman]

Nami Tsu the pop singer?

[Vagabond]

Can I make a suggestion? If anyone of us is using material not our own can we please refference that? (webaddress, book, magazine etc)
I have seen a lot of material "used" from sources not our own. If, in fact any of these quotes are googled by the original publishers we can be taken to court.

Just a thought

[Bordertangoman]

Can I make a suggestion? If anyone of us is using material not our own can we please refference that? (webaddress, book, magazine etc)
I have seen a lot of material "used" from sources not our own. If, in fact any of these quotes are googled by the original publishers we can be taken to court.

Just a thought

fair enough but I heard it on the radio; then looked it up on wicktionary; websters and some other sources and they prettty much said the same thing, so i din't feel the need to attribute it and not in the mood for umbel pie.

The Golda Meyer quote is common knowledge; I have come across it on several sources again including the radio.

[Vagabond]

Listen all I'm trying to say that we should kindly acknowledge our source. Nothing to do with humble pie and nothing to do with being subserviant its just common respect for the author

BTW the listed sites do acknowledge their sources