No, I don't know Greek, though I'd love to. I know *about* Greek, enough to be able to use reference materials. If you are curious about Ancient Greek, I recommend getting a scholar's edition of Euclid's *Elements*, with Greek and English on facing pages. The Perseus Project has Euclid on the web, but the user interface is a little clunky. It's great fun (and strangely moving) to sound out "*Protos arithmos estin ho monadi monei metroumenos*", and figure out why that means "A prime number is one which by the unit alone is measured." (*Elements*, VII, def. 11.) On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 8:52 PM, Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> wrote:
Thanks for the responses!
Allan writes:
<< What a cool word. There are a few Greek words with this stem, which all seem to share a sense of measuring, aligning, or marking out. The feminine noun "stathma" or "stathme" means a carpenter's rule or line; the masculine "stathmos" is an animal's rectangular stall. The verb "stathmao" means "measure by rule." The neuter noun "stathmon" means a weight. I'm not sure if all of these have the same etymological origin.
Interesting. Wow, you know Greek?!
--Dan
_____________________________________________________________________ "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi." --Peter Schickele
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