Προβληματίστηκα σε ποιο υποφόρουμ να ξεκινήσω το νήμα, στο αγγλοελληνικό ή στο ελληνοαγγλικό, αλλά μια και πρόκειται κυρίως για ελληνικές λέξεις που θέλουν εξήγηση στα Αγγλικά, είπα να το ρίξω εδώ.
Σάββατο σήμερα, το ηλεδελτίο του Κουίνιον με περίμενε στο ηλεταχυδρομείο μου και ιδού πού έπεσε πρώτα το μάτι μου:
Asynartesia
Question from Elizabeth Sears: Do you know what asynartesia means, or if it is actually a word? I ran across it in The Strange Case of Edward Gorey by Alexander Theroux, in which he described Gorey’s “shadowy ... world of attrition and asynartesia”.
Answer: It took merely a moment’s search to determine that asynartesia is a very rare word, though it is clear that it’s of Greek origin. One critic responded badly to Theroux’s use of it:
...
Having a big dictionary doesn’t help, alas. None that I consulted included it, not even the multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary. But a very few do have asynartete and its adjective asynartetic, of which asynartesia looks like a derivative. The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary defines asynartete as “containing disparate or unconnected rhythmic units” in two senses: “with unhomogeneous rhythms in the two members distinguished by the caesura” and “with diaeresis, hiatus, or syllaba anceps at the caesura so that a quasi independence of the two members is effected.” That deeply technical definition isn’t helpful unless you already know a bit about Latin and Greek classical verse. The Collins Dictionary is usefully more succinct: “having or containing two different types of metre”. To try to explain this more simply, I think asynartetic refers to a line of verse in which a break occurs (the caesura), with the rhythm of the verse on either side being different.
As one of the only two other appearances of asynartesia I have found is in a work of AE Housman in which he is discussing the verse of Bacchylides, a Greek poet of the fifth century BC, this seems to be in the right area.
The third appearance is open to similar criticism of taking pleasure from obscurity. It’s in Thou Whited Wall, a story by R A Lafferty in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1976:
...
I’m way outside my comfort zone with this fragment of sub-Joycean exposition. It’s obvious from the story that we are concerned with the writing of gnomic and riddling messages on walls, confirmed by the reference to graffiti. Kakographia is an old Greek precursor of English cacographia, bad writing or spelling; syngramma is writing or prose; zographia might be related to zoography, the art of depicting animals (perhaps writing by animals); ektyposis could be rendered as ectopoesis, poetry of the street (one way of describing writing on walls); scherzi is the plural of scherzo, the musical term, from the Italian for a jest; ochsenscheiber looks as though it might be German, something done like an ox, so crudely executed (spelled Ochsenschreiber, it might be writing done by an ox, though I can find the word in no German dictionary). The rest I gave up trying to decipher.
The effort of deducing Mr Lafferty’s meaning will attract those who have superb vocabularies and the instincts of crossword-puzzle solvers. [χε χε] The rest of us, I suspect, will be tempted to pass over writing of this playful but self-consciously erudite complexity.
Τα έντονα δικά μου.
Το OED πάντως, η ηλέκδοσή του (Second edition, 2009), γράφει:
asynartete, a. and n. Pros. (əˈsɪnɑːtiːt)
[ad. Gr. ἀσυνάρτητος not connected (also used subst. of verses), f. ἀ priv. + συν-αρτά-ειν to knit together.]
A. adj. Not connected; consisting of two members having different rhythms.
B. n. A verse of this nature. Hence asynartetic (əˌsɪnɑːˈtɛtɪk), a.
[? 1792 Burney Parr's Wks. (1828) VII. 412 Which follows another asynartetum, which also ends with ithyphallic *.] 1830 tr. Aristoph. Wasps 122 note, The metre‥ is an asynartete of Iamb. and Troch. 1847 Grote Greece ii. xxix. (1862) III. 77 Combinations of the dactyl, trochee and iambus, analogous to the asynartetic verses of Archilochus.
Από τα δικά μας, ΛΚΝ και Γεωργακά που κοίταξα, ευνόητα λείπει η εξειδικευμένη σημασία στην ποίηση, που όμως για έναν ελληνόγλωσσο πιστεύω ότι καλύπτεται μια χαρά από τη σημασία στο γενικό λεξιλόγιο: ασυνάρτητος, ασυναρτησία. Υπάρχει το ασύνδετο σχήμα, αλλά εκείνο είναι διαφορετικό, η απουσία συνδέσμων, όχι η απουσία συνοχής.
Λοιπόν, αφού βρήκε μια άκρη με την ασυναρτησία, θα βοηθήσει κανείς τον Μάικλ Κουίνιον να αποκρυπτογραφήσει σωστά τις ελληνογενείς λέξεις, τη σαν γερμανική και τις υπόλοιπες παραπάνω; Εγώ πάντως κάποια λατινογενή του κειμένου του αναγκάστηκα να ψάξω σε λεξικά. :)
* Για το ιθυφαλλικό μέτρο (με το συμπάθιο) και τα συμπαρομαρτούντα (και συμπαραμαρτάνοντα, φτου, κακά) βακχικά έχουμε ήδη νήμα.
Σάββατο σήμερα, το ηλεδελτίο του Κουίνιον με περίμενε στο ηλεταχυδρομείο μου και ιδού πού έπεσε πρώτα το μάτι μου:
Asynartesia
Question from Elizabeth Sears: Do you know what asynartesia means, or if it is actually a word? I ran across it in The Strange Case of Edward Gorey by Alexander Theroux, in which he described Gorey’s “shadowy ... world of attrition and asynartesia”.
Answer: It took merely a moment’s search to determine that asynartesia is a very rare word, though it is clear that it’s of Greek origin. One critic responded badly to Theroux’s use of it:
...
If I sound cruel, it’s because ultimately I can’t forgive any writer who can use the word asynartesia with a straight face, as Theroux did in those doomful first ten pages of his book. That’s not taking joy in obscure words, as Gorey often did. That’s telling the reader that you’ve got a bigger dictionary than he has.
The Spook, Feb. 2002.
The Spook, Feb. 2002.
Having a big dictionary doesn’t help, alas. None that I consulted included it, not even the multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary. But a very few do have asynartete and its adjective asynartetic, of which asynartesia looks like a derivative. The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary defines asynartete as “containing disparate or unconnected rhythmic units” in two senses: “with unhomogeneous rhythms in the two members distinguished by the caesura” and “with diaeresis, hiatus, or syllaba anceps at the caesura so that a quasi independence of the two members is effected.” That deeply technical definition isn’t helpful unless you already know a bit about Latin and Greek classical verse. The Collins Dictionary is usefully more succinct: “having or containing two different types of metre”. To try to explain this more simply, I think asynartetic refers to a line of verse in which a break occurs (the caesura), with the rhythm of the verse on either side being different.
As one of the only two other appearances of asynartesia I have found is in a work of AE Housman in which he is discussing the verse of Bacchylides, a Greek poet of the fifth century BC, this seems to be in the right area.
The third appearance is open to similar criticism of taking pleasure from obscurity. It’s in Thou Whited Wall, a story by R A Lafferty in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1976:
...
No good name had ever been found to describe the excellence and many-leveled meaning of this testimony on the walls. It had been called kakographia and syngramma and scribble-schnibble. It had been called zographia and ektyposis and ochsenscheiber. It had been called chromatisma and schediasma and oscenite. It had been called scherzi and motfi motti and asynartesia. The Italians have called it graffita, and the name may have stuck.
I’m way outside my comfort zone with this fragment of sub-Joycean exposition. It’s obvious from the story that we are concerned with the writing of gnomic and riddling messages on walls, confirmed by the reference to graffiti. Kakographia is an old Greek precursor of English cacographia, bad writing or spelling; syngramma is writing or prose; zographia might be related to zoography, the art of depicting animals (perhaps writing by animals); ektyposis could be rendered as ectopoesis, poetry of the street (one way of describing writing on walls); scherzi is the plural of scherzo, the musical term, from the Italian for a jest; ochsenscheiber looks as though it might be German, something done like an ox, so crudely executed (spelled Ochsenschreiber, it might be writing done by an ox, though I can find the word in no German dictionary). The rest I gave up trying to decipher.
The effort of deducing Mr Lafferty’s meaning will attract those who have superb vocabularies and the instincts of crossword-puzzle solvers. [χε χε] The rest of us, I suspect, will be tempted to pass over writing of this playful but self-consciously erudite complexity.
Τα έντονα δικά μου.
Το OED πάντως, η ηλέκδοσή του (Second edition, 2009), γράφει:
asynartete, a. and n. Pros. (əˈsɪnɑːtiːt)
[ad. Gr. ἀσυνάρτητος not connected (also used subst. of verses), f. ἀ priv. + συν-αρτά-ειν to knit together.]
A. adj. Not connected; consisting of two members having different rhythms.
B. n. A verse of this nature. Hence asynartetic (əˌsɪnɑːˈtɛtɪk), a.
[? 1792 Burney Parr's Wks. (1828) VII. 412 Which follows another asynartetum, which also ends with ithyphallic *.] 1830 tr. Aristoph. Wasps 122 note, The metre‥ is an asynartete of Iamb. and Troch. 1847 Grote Greece ii. xxix. (1862) III. 77 Combinations of the dactyl, trochee and iambus, analogous to the asynartetic verses of Archilochus.
Από τα δικά μας, ΛΚΝ και Γεωργακά που κοίταξα, ευνόητα λείπει η εξειδικευμένη σημασία στην ποίηση, που όμως για έναν ελληνόγλωσσο πιστεύω ότι καλύπτεται μια χαρά από τη σημασία στο γενικό λεξιλόγιο: ασυνάρτητος, ασυναρτησία. Υπάρχει το ασύνδετο σχήμα, αλλά εκείνο είναι διαφορετικό, η απουσία συνδέσμων, όχι η απουσία συνοχής.
Λοιπόν, αφού βρήκε μια άκρη με την ασυναρτησία, θα βοηθήσει κανείς τον Μάικλ Κουίνιον να αποκρυπτογραφήσει σωστά τις ελληνογενείς λέξεις, τη σαν γερμανική και τις υπόλοιπες παραπάνω; Εγώ πάντως κάποια λατινογενή του κειμένου του αναγκάστηκα να ψάξω σε λεξικά. :)
* Για το ιθυφαλλικό μέτρο (με το συμπάθιο) και τα συμπαρομαρτούντα (και συμπαραμαρτάνοντα, φτου, κακά) βακχικά έχουμε ήδη νήμα.
Last edited:
