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Thanks, 'Man, for all these extra phrases. All of them are useful additions to my armoury!:)

They are, Dr. The fault is generally mine. :)

Thanks, Dr, yet again! Sorry for appearing obtuse.

Thanks, Dr. The brevity of both phrases appeals to me!:)

I am noting these varied views on the state of Greece now from colleagues who know much more than I do. Suffice it to make three points:- 1) from the distinguished novelist Dame Hilary Mantel, who.claimed that history is only ever the best we can do based on the evidence that is left. She...

I need a concise Greek translation of this English put-me-down (= means of humiliation):- 'It is better to keep your mouth shut & appear a fool than to open it & remove all doubt'. It is used when someone is pontificating on a matter they are wholly ignorant of to someone who is much more...

Thanks both! At least it was worth asking the question. For 'not to mention' I only knew για να μην αναφέρω και, ξέχωρα, χωρίς να γίνει λόγος και για. I assumed that βάλε was the imperative of βάζω but that was as far as it went. The meaning of the good Dr's 2nd paragraph re 'the one step...

In a thread Nickel started δηλ. Μήπως να κάψουμε και ομοίωμα της Μέρκελ μπροστά στη γερμανική πρεσβεία; reply #113, Earion wrote Δεν είναι μόνο μικρόψυχος ο πρύτανης, είναι και τυφλός. Γράφει λες και δεν έχει και η δικιά μας ιστορία, των Νεοελλήνων, σκελετούς στο ντουλάπι. Upon which the good Dr...

Thanks, 'Man for word & the links also. Very useful indeed. No flash in the pan is 'Man! :)

I didn't know that Distomo had sued Germany for compensation; I have heard that the present financial hardships of Greece were due to the German Occupation in WWII , which reduced Greece to a poverty, of which she is still feeling the effects. But how true this is I don't know.

Thanks, Nickel.:)

I am indebted to all colleagues for their diligence & scholarship. Since I wasn't quite sure of exactly quite what was happening here, I should have given the whole sentence. I am heartened by the fact that the word caused some puzzlement to many, since it shows that it isn't immediately...

Re: The massacre at Distomo:- σηκώθηκε κουρνιαχτός από το ανεμοβολητό των βλημάτων. Does it here mean the 'wind-borne sound' of shots?

See the table in the article at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Human_losses_by_country. The total sum there is given at 507,000 to 807,000. My figure was based on massacres and extermination of the Greek Jews & is clearly wrong. The table I have given is more accurate...

There are two meanings of this English phrase:- 1) a sudden spasmodic effort that accomplishes nothing 2) one that appears promising but turns out to be disappointing or worthless I want a good Greek idiom for the latter. The first, I think, might be φούρια και πέρασε. An English synonym for...

Thanks for all these reminisces, SBE. My modern history was from the outbreak of the French Revolution to 1939. What had happened in WW2 was still relatively recent & not yet 'history'. The Holocaust wasn't even heard of. A conservative estimate of how many Greeks were massacred by the Nazis is...

How ignorant I am of this side of Greek life! A classical education has proved invaluable to me in so many ways but there is a huge lacuna to be filled between the Greek history I have studied & the Greece of modern times. For you to have met someone whose father survived Doxato (& no! I had not...

Thanks so much, SBE. I hadn't heard of Kalavryta either. It seems that when school trips visit France & Germany, they visit the battlefields of WW1 or the gas camps in Poland. But in Greece it is the sites of Classical interest without a mention of the sufferings the Greeks endured in WW2...

I have just heard of the massacre at Distomo, near Delphi. It beggars belief that we went on a school trip on which Delphi was a must and I had never heard of this. We even intended to visit the church of Agios Loukas in Arahova. I am horrified. Is there anything I can read about it in Greek...

Thanks, Palαύρα, for the idiom and the clip. :)