Lexigame Community
General Category => Words => Topic started by: Leedscot on February 12, 2020, 10:34:47 AM
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Common? When??
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All the names of the letters in the Greek alphabet are common. I think it better to have the consistency than to argue over which letters should be common and rare.
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All the names of the letters in the Greek alphabet are common
Are they really though? For sure many of them are commonly used in English expressions (alpha male, beta blocker, gamma ray, delta wing, etc.) but others not so much (I can’t think of any occasion to use “omicron” except to refer expressly to the Greek letter itself, although I am happy to be proved wrong on this!).
I can see where the argument for consistency is coming from, but this isn’t applied to other categories (currency units, for example: “dollar” and “krone”’ are common whereas “forint” and “ringgit” are rare). Yes, the diving line between “common” and “rare” will always have an arbitrary element to it, but trying to second guess where the dividing line is is half the fun!
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That is a very good point - just take the eland and springbok discussion. Consistency is not the rule.
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Somewhere there is (or was) something to the effect that common words were those words which should be known to a well-read person (or words to that effect). ISTM any well-read person should be familiar with the Greek letters.
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These days, unfortunately,very few schools in UK offer Latin and far fewer are able to teach classical Greek.
[An echo of Ben Jonson's words to Shakespeare ('Thou hadst small Latin and less Greek') perhaps!]
Consequently, how the 'well-educated, well-read' members of the present generation (the Chi players of the future!!) will learn the Greek Alphabet is not at all clear.
As Jancsika says, many of the names of the Greek letters have become known to English speakers in other ways, but I am not convinced that (of those Greek letters spelled in English with four or more letters) 'kappa', 'omicron', 'epsilon' and 'upsilon', for example, would be familiar to someone without 'a classical education'.
I'm all for consistency when it comes to classifying words in Chi, but I'm not sure it is appropriate here.
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but I am not convinced that (of those Greek letters spelled in English with four or more letters) 'kappa', 'omicron', 'epsilon' and 'upsilon', for example, would be familiar to someone without 'a classical education'.
I didn't have a classical education but modern Greek was common in parts of Melbourne and my kids learned Greek at Richmond Primary school, which also had bilingual classes.
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Many of the players have learnt new words thanks to Chi, TINEA comes to mind for myself ( I knew RINGWORM but didn't know TINEA).
If all the ''rare'' common words were demoted new players might not have the same opportunity to increase their vocabulary.
I think OMICRON should stay common, I knew the word and I didn't have a classical education.
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Many, many years ago, I had a friend in university who was pledging a fraternity. One of the requirements was striking a cardboard match, holding it with fingers, then reciting the letters of the Greek alphabet in order three times before dropping/extinguishing the match. It required speeding through the letters, i.e. one had to be able to recite the Greek alphabet nearly as well as the English alphabet.
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Whenever I hear omicron, I think of the Futurama TV show:
(https://theinfosphere.org/images/0/03/ALS-C-17-02.jpg)
Omicron, kappa, epsilon, and others are also used in fraternity and sorority names and in honor societies, so Greek letters will show up in pop culture over here too.
https://www.imdb.com/poll/cGDN208yAgA/
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<snip> but I am not convinced that (of those Greek letters spelled in English with four or more letters) 'kappa', 'omicron', 'epsilon' and 'upsilon', for example, would be familiar to someone without 'a classical education'.
I'm all for consistency when it comes to classifying words in Chi, but I'm not sure it is appropriate here.
Maybe it's a North American thing (those pesky Americans, again!). As anonsi just mentioned, universities in the United States, maybe even most, have fraternities, sororities and honor societies that identify themselves with Greek letters, frequently including those that MK specifically names. Phi Beta Kappa, the premier collegiate honor society in the U. S., comes to mind. Even many high schools have honor societies that are identified by Greek letters.
As for why some of the lesser known Greek letters are classified as common, I refer you to this forum post from 2009 (http://this forum post from 2009). [Hint: It's for the kind of consistency that some Chihuahua players claim to long for.]
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Maybe it's a North American thing....As anonsi just mentioned, universities in the United States, maybe even most, have fraternities, sororities and honor societies that identify themselves with Greek letters, frequently including those that MK specifically names. Phi Beta Kappa, the premier collegiate honor society in the U. S., comes to mind. Even many high schools have honor societies that are identified by Greek letters.
I think it is an American thing - fraternities and sororities are the North American equivalent of the British 'Old Boy / Old Girl / Old School Tie' network, which, ironically, came up for discussion on this forum a few weeks ago.
So, leaving aside their use in naming N. American academic societies, how many of the 24 letters, 14 of which are spelled in English with 4 or more letters, are likely to be known by the proverbial 'Man on the Clapham omnibus'? ('John Doe' to North Americans).
I would add 'iota' and 'omega' to Jancsika's original list of four; many of the others are used in Science and Mathematics, but often to denote quite advanced concepts.
I learned them at school more than sixty years ago.
I could probably still, if my life depended on it, (very slowly!!) decipher a line or two of Homer.
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So, leaving aside their use in naming N. American academic societies, how many of the 24 letters, 14 of which are spelled in English with 4 or more letters, are likely to be known by the proverbial 'Man on the Clapham omnibus'? ('John Doe' to North Americans).
Ah, but is the 'Man on the Clapham omnibus' reasonably well-read? If not, then he doesn't get much say as to what's in the Chihuahua common lexicon.
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From Wikipedia (my italics)
'The man on the Clapham omnibus is a hypothetical ordinary and reasonable person, used by the courts in English law where it is necessary to decide whether a party has acted as a reasonable person would – for example, in a civil action for negligence. The man on the Clapham omnibus is a reasonably educated, intelligent but nondescript person, against whom the defendant's conduct can be measured.'
I would guess that, like Shakespeare, he would have 'small Latin and less Greek'.
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I would add 'iota' and 'omega' to Jancsika's original list of four; many of the others are used in Science and Mathematics, but often to denote quite advanced concepts.
Yes, as in “not one iota” and “ I am the alpha and the omega” (or omega-3, for the health conscious among us.)
Most of the Greek letters are used as mathematical symbols (although I don’t recall “omicron” ever being used, I guess its resemblance to the letter “o” and the digit “0” render it it a bit useless!). Of these, I’d be tempted to include “theta” as common, as it is generally used to refer to an unknown angle, even in high-school mathematics.
The one that has me wavering is “epsilon”. It’s used in maths to demote a very small or infinitesimal quantity, which probably counts as “advanced” (and therefore “rare”). On the other hand, , it also is used to refer to the lowest caste of workers in Huxley’s classic “Brave New world” which just might tip it in the balance towards “common”!
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There are several goals which can be aimed for in deciding such issues - and they tend to be in conflict with each other. There is the goal of consistency. There is the goal of minimising the likelihood that a player will miss playing a common word because they've never heard of it. And I've recently been drawn to the Hippocratic goal of doing no harm - that is, leaving things as they are unless it seems certain a change will improve things.
On the current question, when the Greek letter names were first discussed (https://theforum.lexigame.com/index.php?topic=1472.msg36317#msg36317) in 2009, I commented that it was hard to know where to draw the line between common and rare in the Greek alphabet. Hence, I achieved consistency by changing zeta from rare to common. All the other letter names long enough for the puzzle, including omicron, were already common.
But when omicron last appeared in a daily puzzle, on 12 August, only 59 people played it: about one seventh of the players that day. It's hard to know how to interpret that, because it's a tricky word to think of, even if you know the word. But it seems likely that some players simply were not familiar with the word. Word usage frequencies show that omicron and upsilon are used far less often than any of the other members of the Greek alphabet. And I don't think those two words have any non-technical uses, except in relation to the fraternity societies, etc, in the US.
I conclude that omicron and upsilon should be rare in future. I'm not sure about some of the others, such as zeta, but applying the "do no harm" principle, I'll leave them as common until I'm persuaded otherwise.
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It's not merely students of Classical Greek that will regard these letters as familiar, but astronomers. The first 26 stars in a constellation are assigned Greek letters, followed by the genitive form of the containing constellation, in order of magnitude (with a few historical errors persisting).
For example, in the constellation Orion, the star Betelgeuse is Alpha Orionis, and Rigel is Beta Orionis. When these were named for their status in the constellation in the Bayer Catalogue, Betelgeuse was visibly brighter than Rigel, but of course, Betelgeuse has since been found to be a variable star whose magnitude fluctuates over long periods of time.
Among the notable 'omicrons' are:
Omicron Cephei - close binary star system
Omicron Persei - triple star system
Omicron Ursae Majoris - star with an exoplanet known to be orbiting it
Omicron1 Eridani - variable star of the Delta Scuti class, with rapid rotation and large equatorial bulge
Omicron1 Canis Majoris - distant red supergiant and irregular variable star
Incidentally, returning to Classical Greek for a moment, omicron and omega, the two letters for o-type vowel sounds in Greek words, are named appropriately for the type of vowel sound - omicron (o-micron) is for short (small) o-vowel sounds, and omega (o-mega) for long (large) o-vowel sounds.
For those who love minutiae of this sort, these two vowels can also be found written with what is known as the 'iota subscript' directly underneath. The use of an iota subscript to denote a following iota has had numerous hilarious consequences, courtesy of the fact that an iota subscript can be mistaken for a dirt mark on a papyrus, resulting in translation controversies.
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In addition to the term "alpha and omega," I've seen the words (especially alpha) used very frequently in romance novels, especially in the paranormal sub-genre. I'm kind of getting tired of reading blurbs describing, e.g., "the alpha billionaire's secret baby." I wish they'd think up some new plots. "Omega" seems to be used mostly in shifter (were animal) themed novels, but I've seen it used increasingly in the last few years.
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It's common now! ;D
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Sure changed in just a few days, hasn't it?