The word epithet also may refer to an abusive, defamatory, or derogatory word or phrase.[2][3] This use is criticized by Martin Manser and other proponents of linguistic prescription.[4]H. W. Fowler noted in 1926 that "epithet is suffering a vulgarization that is giving it an abusive imputation."[5]
Linguistics
Epithets are sometimes attached to a person's name or appear in place of their name, as what might be described as a glorified nickname or sobriquet, and for this reason some linguists have argued that they should be considered as pronouns.[6] It has also been argued that epithets are a phenomenon with the syntax–semantics interface, because they have components of both, and also a pragmatic dimension.[6]
An epithet is linked to its noun by long-established usage. Not every adjective is an epithet. An epithet is especially recognizable when its function is largely decorative, such as if "cloud-gathering Zeus" is employed other than in reference to conjuring up a storm. "The epithets are decorative insofar as they are neither essential to the immediate context nor modeled especially for it. Among other things, they are extremely helpful to fill out a half-verse", Walter Burkert has noted.[7]
Some epithets are known by the Latin term epitheton necessarium, as they are required to distinguish the bearers, as an alternative to numbers after a prince's name—such as Richard the Lionheart (Richard I of England), or Charles the Fat alongside Charles the Bald. The same epithet can be used repeatedly joined to different names, such as Alexander the Great as well as Constantine the Great.
Other epithets can easily be omitted without serious risk of confusion and are therefore known as epitheton ornans. Thus, the classical Roman author Virgil systematically called his main hero pius Aeneas, the epithet being pius, meaning religiously observant, humble and wholesome, as well as calling the armsbearer of Aeneasfidus Achates, the epithet being fidus, which means faithful or loyal.
Literature
Epithets are characteristic of the style of ancient epic poetry, notably in that of Homer or the northern European sagas (see above, as well as epithets in Homer). When James Joyce uses the phrase "the snot-green sea" he is playing Homer's familiar epithet "the wine-dark sea". The phrase "Discreet Telemachus" is also considered an epithet.
The Greek term antonomasia, in rhetoric, means substituting any epithet or phrase for a proper name, as "Pelides", signifying the "son of Peleus", to identify Achilles. An opposite substitution of a proper name for some generic term is also sometimes called antonomasia, as a Cicero for an orator. The use of a father's name or ancestor's name, such as "Pelides" in the case of Achilles, or "Saturnia" in the case of the goddess Juno in Virgil's Aeneid, is specifically called a patronymic device and is in its own class of epithet.
Epithets were in layman's terms glorified nicknames that could be used to represent one's style, artistic nature, or even geographical reference. They originated to simply serve the purpose of dealing with names that were hard to pronounce or just unpleasant.[8] It from there went to something that could be very significant assigned by elders or counterparts to represent one's position in the community, or it could be a representation of whomever one wanted to be or thought he was.[9] The elegance of this movement was used throughout history and even modern day, with many examples ranging from "Aphrodite the Heavenly & Zeus the Protector of Guests" all the way to "Johnny Football & King James".[8]
In many polytheistic religions, such as those of ancient India[11] and Iran[12] (the most ancient of which go back to a common Indo-Iranian period),[13] Greece and Rome, a deity's epithets generally reflected a particular aspect of that god's essence and role, for which their influence may be obtained for a specific occasion: Apollo Musagetes is "Apollo, [as] leader of the Muses" and therefore patron of the arts and sciences, while Phoibos Apollo is the same deity, but as shining sun-god. "Athena protects the city as polias, oversees handicrafts as ergane, joins battle as promachos and grants victory as nike."[14]
Alternatively, the epithet may identify a particular and localized aspect of the god, such as a reference to the mythological place of birth or numinous presence at a specific sanctuary: sacrifice might be offered on one and the same occasion to Pythian Apollo (Apollo Pythios) and Delphic Apollo (Apollo Delphinios). A localizing epithet refers simply to a particular center of veneration and the cultic tradition there, as the god manifested at a particular festival, for example: Zeus Olympios, Zeus as present at Olympia, or Apollo Karneios, Apollo at the Spartan Carneian festival.
Often the epithet is the result of fusion of the Olympian divinity with an older one. Poseidon Erechtheus and Artemis Orthia reflect intercultural equations of a divinity with an older one that is generally considered its pendan. Thus, most Roman gods and goddesses, especially the Twelve Olympians, had traditional counterparts in Greek, Etruscan, and most other Mediterranean pantheons, such as Jupiter as head of the Olympian Gods with Zeus. But in specific cults there may be a different equation, based on one specific aspect of the divinity. Thus, the Greek word Trismegistos ("thrice grand") was first used as a Greek name for the Egyptian god of science and invention, Thoth, later as an epitheton for the Greek Hermes and, finally, the fully equated Roman Mercurius Mercury (both were messenger of the gods). Among the Greeks, T.H. Price notes[15] that the nurturing power of Kourotrophos might be invoked in sacrifices and recorded in inscription, without specifically identifying Hera or Demeter.
Some epithets were applied to several deities of the same pantheon rather accidentally if they had a common characteristic, or deliberately, emphasizing their blood or other ties. Thus, in pagan Rome, several divinities gods and heroes were given the epithetonComes as companion of another (usually major) divinity. An epithet can even be meant for collective use, e.g., in Latin pilleati, "the felt hat-wearers" for the brothers Castor and Pollux. Some epithets resist explanation.[14]
An epithet is an adjective or adjectival phrase that characterizes a place, a thing, or a person that helps make the characteristics of this thing more prominent. These descriptive phrases can be used in a positive or negative way that benefits the orator. "It will generally happen, that the Epithets employed by a skillful orator, will be found to be, in fact, so many abridged arguments, the force of which is sufficiently conveyed by a mere hint; e.g., if any one says, 'We ought to take warning from the bloody revolution of France,' the Epithet suggests one of the reasons for our being warned; and that, not less clearly, and more forcibly, than if the argument had been stated at length."[16] With persuasion being a key component of rhetoric, it is rational to use epithets. The use of persuasive wording gives leverage to one's arguments. Knowledge along with descriptive words or phrases can be a powerful tool. This is supported in Bryan Short's article when he states, "The New Rhetoric derives its empiricist flavor from a pervasive respect for clarity and directness of language."[17] Rhetoricians use epithets to direct their audience to see their point of view, using verbal forms of imagery as a persuasive tactic.
Orators have a variety of epithets that they can employ that have different meanings. The most common are fixed epithets and transferred epithets. A fixed epithet is the repetitive use of the same word or phrase for the same person or object. A transferred epithet qualifies a noun other than the person or thing it is describing. This is also known as a hypallage. This can often involve shifting a modifier from the animate to the inanimate; for example, "cheerful money" and "suicidal sky".
Orators take special care when using epithets so as to not use them as smear words. Orators could be accused of racial or abusive epithets if used incorrectly. American journalist William Safire discussed the use of the word in a 2008 column in The New York Times: "'I am working on a piece about nationalism with a focus on epithet as a smear word,' writes David Binder, my longtime Times colleague, 'which was still a synonym for 'delineation' or 'characterization' in my big 1942 Webster's but now seems to be almost exclusively a synonym for 'derogation' or 'smear word.' ... In the past century, [epithet] blossomed as 'a word of abuse,' today gleefully seized upon to describe political smears."[18]
Descriptive bynames were given to a person to distinguish them from other people of the same name.[19] In England bynames were used during the period when the use of surnames had not been extensively adopted. As an example the Domesday Book of 1086 identifies 40 individuals with the given name of "Richard". Most (40%), such as "Richard of Coursey" are identified with a locational byname, indicating where they came from, or in some cases where they lived. Others (25%), such as "Richard the butler" and "Richard the bald" are identified with an occupational or a personally descriptive byname. Some of the individuals, such as Richard Basset, made use of what would now be recognized as a surname.
The distinction between a byname and a surname is that the byname is not usually heritable, and may change for any given person as his circumstances change. Richard the Bald, for example, was presumably not always bald, and Richard of Brampton may not have always lived at Brampton.
The use of bynames did not end with the adoption of surnames. In some cases, before the adoption of middle names, government records, such as taxes lists, included people with both the same given name and the same surname. This led to the use of bynames to further distinguish the person. For example, one "John Smith" might be described as "John Smith of the mill", while another might be described as "John Smith the short".
Apollo is one of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, and more. One of the most important and complex of the Greek gods, he is the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. He is considered to be the most beautiful god and is represented as the ideal of the kouros. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu.
In ancient Greek religion, Hera is the goddess of marriage, women, and family, and the protector of women during childbirth. In Greek mythology, she is queen of the twelve Olympians and Mount Olympus, sister and wife of Zeus, and daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. One of her defining characteristics in myth is her jealous and vengeful nature in dealing with any who offended her, especially Zeus's numerous adulterous lovers and illegitimate offspring.
Poseidon is one of the Twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and mythology, presiding over the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses. He was the protector of seafarers and the guardian of many Hellenic cities and colonies. In pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece, Poseidon was venerated as a chief deity at Pylos and Thebes, with the cult title "earth shaker"; in the myths of isolated Arcadia, he is related to Demeter and Persephone and was venerated as a horse, and as a god of the waters. Poseidon maintained both associations among most Greeks: he was regarded as the tamer or father of horses, who, with a strike of his trident, created springs. His Roman equivalent is Neptune.
In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Persephone, also called Kore or Cora, is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. She became the queen of the underworld after her abduction by her uncle Hades, the king of the underworld, who would later also take her into marriage.
Zeus is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion and mythology, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus. His name is cognate with the first syllable of his Roman equivalent Jupiter.
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Hestia is the virgin goddess of the hearth and the home. In myth, she is the firstborn child of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, and one of the Twelve Olympians.
An adjective is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Helios is the god who personifies the Sun. His name is also Latinized as Helius, and he is often given the epithets Hyperion and Phaethon. Helios is often depicted in art with a radiant crown and driving a horse-drawn chariot through the sky. He was a guardian of oaths and also the god of sight. Though Helios was a relatively minor deity in Classical Greece, his worship grew more prominent in late antiquity thanks to his identification with several major solar divinities of the Roman period, particularly Apollo and Sol. The Roman Emperor Julian made Helios the central divinity of his short-lived revival of traditional Roman religious practices in the 4th century AD.
A paean is a song or lyric poem expressing triumph or thanksgiving. In classical antiquity, it is usually performed by a chorus, but some examples seem intended for an individual voice (monody). It comes from the Greek παιάν, "song of triumph, any solemn song or chant". "Paeon" was also the name of a divine physician and an epithet ("byname") of Apollo.
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Pan is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, rustic music and impromptus, and companion of the nymphs. He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr. With his homeland in rustic Arcadia, he is also recognized as the god of fields, groves, wooded glens, and often affiliated with sex; because of this, Pan is connected to fertility and the season of spring.
Eileithyia or Ilithyia was the Greek goddess of childbirth and midwifery, and the daughter of Zeus and Hera. In the cave of Amnisos (Crete) she was related with the annual birth of the divine child, and her cult is connected with Enesidaon, who was the chthonic aspect of the god Poseidon. It is possible that her cult is related with the cult of Eleusis. In his Seventh Nemean Ode, Pindar refers to her as the maid to or seated beside the Moirai (Fates) and responsible for the creation of offspring. Her son was Sosipolis, who was worshiped at Elis.
The Ancient Greek: δαίμων, spelled daimon or daemon, originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit, such as the daimons of ancient Greek religion and mythology and later the daimons of Hellenistic religion and philosophy. The word is derived from Proto-Indo-European daimon "provider, divider ," from the root *da- "to divide". Daimons were possibly seen as the souls of men of the golden age, tutelary deities, or the forces of fate. See also daimonic: a religious, philosophical, literary and psychological concept.
Traditional grammar is a framework for the description of the structure of a language or group of languages. The roots of traditional grammar are in the work of classical Greek and Latin philologists. The formal study of grammar based on these models became popular during the Renaissance.
A triple deity is a deity with three apparent forms that function as a singular whole. Such deities may sometimes be referred to as threefold, tripled, triplicate, tripartite, triune, triadic, or as a trinity. The number three has a long history of mythical associations and triple deities are common throughout world mythology. Carl Jung considered the arrangement of deities into triplets an archetype in the history of religion.
Owing to its origin in ancient Greece and Rome, English rhetorical theory frequently employs Greek and Latin words as terms of art. This page explains commonly used rhetorical terms in alphabetical order. The brief definitions here are intended to serve as a quick reference rather than an in-depth discussion. For more information, click the terms.
In Ancient Greek religion and mythology, Enodia is a distinctly Thessalian goddess, identified in certain areas or by certain ancient writers with Artemis, Hecate or Persephone. She was paired with Zeus in cult and sometimes shared sanctuaries with him. Enodia was primarily worshipped in Ancient Thessaly and was well known in Hellenistic Macedonia.
In Greek mythology, Gaia, also spelled Gaea, is the personification of Earth. Gaia is the ancestral mother—sometimes parthenogenic—of all life. She is the mother of Uranus (Sky), from whose sexual union she bore the Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Giants, as well as of Pontus (Sea), from whose union she bore the primordial sea gods. Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra.
Apellai, was a three-day family-festival of the Northwest Greeks similar with the Ionic Apaturia, which was dedicated to Apollo . The fest was spread in Greece by the Dorians as it is proved by the use of the month Apellaios, in various Dorian states.
Greek divination is the divination practiced by ancient Greek culture as it is known from ancient Greek literature, supplemented by epigraphic and pictorial evidence. Divination is a traditional set of methods of consulting divinity to obtain prophecies (theopropia) about specific circumstances defined beforehand. As it is a form of compelling divinity to reveal its will by the application of method, it is, and has been since classical times, considered a type of magic. Cicero condemns it as superstition. It depends on a presumed "sympathy" between the mantic event and the real circumstance, which he denies as contrary to the laws of nature. If there were any sympathy, and the diviner could discover it, then "men may approach very near to the power of gods."
An epithet is a byname, or a descriptive term, accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. Certain epithets have been used for numerous people throughout history.
↑ Fowler. H. W. (1965) [1926]. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. (2nd ed.) Rev. By Sir Ernest Gowers. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 161.
↑ On their relation of the epithets of the Old Iranian Avesta to the ones attested in the Indic Vedas, and on their Indo-Iranian origin, see Sadovski, Velizar: Zur Morphologie und Semantik von Namen und Epitheta im Indo-Iranischen. Sadovski, Velizar / Panaino, Antonio: Disputationes Iranologicae Vindobonenses, II. (Sitzungsberichte der ÖAW. Philosophisch-historische Klasse, 845. Band / Veröffentlichungen zur Iranistik, Nr. 65). Wien. ISBN978-3-7001-7140-9.
1 2 Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion (Harvard University Press, 1985) III.4.4. "The special character of Greek anthropomorphism", especially p.184.
↑ Price, T. H. Kourotrophos, 1978, noted by Burkert 1985:184.
↑ Whately, Richard (1841). "Elements of Rhetoric". 6.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
↑ Short, Bryan (2000). "Figurative Language in the Scottish New Rhetoric Figurative Language in the Scottish New Rhetoric". Language Sciences. 22. Elsevier. doi:10.1016/S0388-0001(00)00005-X.
↑ Safire, William (June 22, 2008). "Presents of the Mind". The New York Times.
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