WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS COME FROM THE GRECO-ROMAN RELIGION

• fanatic, ovation, hecatomb, holocaust, sibylline  

"FANATIC"

ENGLISH WORD: “fanatic”, "fanatical".

CURRENT MEANING: originally it meant “pertaining to the temple, temple´s servant”, and later came to the present meaning of “enthusiastic”, “excited”, ”extremist” or “frenetic”.

ORIGIN: this adjective derives from the Latin word fanum “temple”. It was used to refer to Cibele´s priests and the priets of many others goddesses, who devoted themselves to religious demonstrations in which they even could cut themselves.

 

"OVATION"

ENGLISH WORD: “ovation”.

CURRENT MEANING: enthusiastic and prolonged applause, approval or apreciation that is conferred to someone by clipping their hands together over and over.

ORIGIN: the victorious roman generals were greeted with a celebration and with the inmolation of a sheep or a bull depending on the importance of the victory. The ceremony in which a sheep is sacrificed received the name of ovatio, a term that came from ovis “sheep”. An ovation was inferior to a triumph and it was conferred to those who had achieved minor victories.

 

 

 Sacrifice in the former Rome.

 "HECATOMB"

ENGLISH WORD: “hecatomb”.

CURRENT MEANING: a massacre or any slaughter on a large scale.

ORIGIN: in the ancient Greek was a sacrifice to gods, consisting originally of a great public slaughter of a hundred oxen. In fact, literally this word means “sacrifice of a hundred oxen” and it´s linked to Panatenaic Games, an important religious festival devoted to Athena that were held every four years in Athens since 566 BC.

 

Procession of sacrificial bulls. Parthenon.

 "HOLOCAUST"

ENGLISH WORD: “holocaust”.

CURRENT MEANING: for hundreds of years, the word holocaust was used in English to denote great massacres and since 1960 this term has come to be used to refer to the nazi genocie of jews.

ORIGIN: the word derives from the Ancient Greek holocaustos, from ὅλος “whole” and καυστός “burnt”, one of the most important religious animal sacrifice in the Ancient World that consists of consuming or destroying utterly the victim by fire and it´s opposed to classic term thyesthai, a kind of ritual offering in which the main target was to share a meal with the god being known as a commensal sacrifice.

 

 

 Preparation of a sacrifice.

"SIBYLLINE"

ENGLISH WORD: “sibylline”.

CURRENT MEANING: the adjective sibylline means “mysterious”, “cryptic” or “something that has a hidden or secret meaning”.

ORIGIN: this word has origin (via Latin) in the Greek word sibylla, with the meaning of “prophetess”. Back in the times of Greeks and Romans, a sibyl was a female oracle who delivered cryptic prophecies foretelling the future. One of the most famous was the Cumaean Sibyl, the prophetess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony located near Naples, Italy. The importance of the Cumaean Sibyl is shown in Virgil´s Aeneid VI, where Sibyl guided Aeneas through the Underworod (Hades).

 

Cumaean Sibyl. Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564).