Today 'Dystopian' cropped up in three articles I read - and come to think of it I have only read three. This word s being freely slapped about - as well it might in the current UK political mix and match muddle. However, one use was to describe a chicken house which seems extreme but that happens with over worked words. What, you may well ask was reading about chicken houses any way...….. because I was looking for some plastic sort of sheeting that was not bio degradable. It seems much is now. Imagine the anger after labouring to keep your clucks warmer to see the sheeting flutter away in shreds a couple of months later. 

Dystopian then is greatly favoured and dragged up from an ancient use by Thomas More and currently rather useful.

There must be others...… so pleased that  'amazing' is on the wane at last.

The word for the day must surely be ‘Brexit’.

Like it or loathe it, the word has entered the mainstream of not just of the English language but also of nearly every language on Earth. I’m not sure exactly when it was first coined or by who, but I first heard it used in a Channel 4 television drama called UKIP: The First 100 Days which was broadcast in February 2015. This was a fictional account of life in Britain following a supposed UKIP victory in a general election and the subsequent formation of a government by that party. The program was antipathetic towards UKIP and the term ‘Brexit’, when used in it, tended to have a negative connotation implying ‘breaks-it’ – i.e. Brexit breaks the EU, breaks the UK, breaks everything.
 
That program had no doubt been commissioned on the back of UKIP’s topping of the poll in the 2014 European elections and the seeming inexorable rise of the party which had either won or come second in every single GB by-election since 2012. It seemed almost certain that in the up-coming 2015 general election UKIP would be bound to make a significant breakthrough. Any orthodox reading of the future of that time, however, would not have put much money on the UK leaving the EU any time in the near future or maybe even at all. For that to happen (following the orthodox route) then UKIP would have had to have won a general election and then call a referendum and then they would have to win that referendum. The chances, however, seemed remote. Even in the 2014 European elections they only took 27% of the vote. So although they might well win seats in the 2015 UK general election it was very unlikely that they would win an overall majority and highly unlikely that they would then be in a position to call, let alone win, a referendum.
 


(UKIP: The First 100 Days - trailer)

As it turned out even the much-vaunted breakthrough didn’t occur. Despite taking over 3,800,000 votes (13% of the votes cast) in the 2015 general election, UKIP came away with exactly 1 MP. And even that MP was only a former Conservative who had switched parties and stood for re-election in the same constituency. By contrast (and for comparison’s sake) Northern Ireland’s SDLP took 99,000 votes and returned 3 MPs in that election. So, far from being able to call for a referendum, UKIP wasn't even able to overcome the Single Largest Wins voting system, let alone form a government or even a coalition. They would just have to lump it and do so for decades just as the Liberal Democrats had had to. It seemed that ‘Brexit’ was as far away as ever.

That would have been the orthodox prognosis. But something unorthodox had occurred. In order to try to stem the seeming haemorrhaging of Tory voters, activists and even MPs to UKIP, the Conservative leader David Cameron had promised an ‘in-out’ referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. This was an extraordinary promise to make considering that no referenda had been held on even such things as the Maastricht Treaty of 1991, the Nice Treaty of 2001 or the Lisbon Treaty of 2007. It was a bit like denying someone water all day long and then in the evening promising them a pint of wine.

The rest, as they say, is history to use a well-worn cliché. And another cliché would be to say that fact is much stranger than fiction. And yet this is indeed the case with subsequent events even surpassing the febrile imaginings of those Channel 4 scriptwriters of 5 years ago.

Our NZ word of the year was OK Boomer used in Parliament by a young Green politician which caused a bit of a fuss. I just felt sad that there is such a divide between the age groups but then I remember similar attitudes when I was young - we despised the attitudes of the older generation especially regarding war. The five words in NZ are mostly New Zealand/Aotearoa focussed. 

• 1. OK Boomer
  
• 2. They Are Us
  
• 3. Ihumātao
  
• 4. Reeferendum
  
• 5. As-Salaam-Alaykum and Climate Emergency
  
• "They are us" is what our PM said after the mosque attack and the last one is the Islamic word for Peace be with you. (Not that I knew that before.) Ihumatao is in relation to a Maori protest over land. And Reederendum refers to the forthcoming referendum on legalising cannabis use. 
  

My husband finds the use of the word "unbelievable" especially in sports talk irritating. And 'things like that'. He says what things are like relaxing, eg. It is pronunciation that irritate me more than words. I find words like contribute and distribute are often said with the emphasis on the first syllable when I use the second syllable. When you are using contribution it is the opposite. These are really very trivial things to get upset about! As is the misuse of apostrophes which irritate both of us and most of our immediate family.

I signed up to Dictionary.com a few years ago to have a "word of the day" emailed to me on a daily basis.  Sometimes they are unusual words but yesterday's (today's hasn't come through yet) was "Groundhog Day" which is technically two words.  I won't go into any more detail because "Groundhog Day" was explained by another commenter on this site some time ago.

I get fed up of "awesome" when applied to something fairly trivial.  I associate having a feeling of awe with something like the first time I saw the inside of St Paul's Cathedral, London.

Edited because there was a "first time" too many.

Interesting that you used the words "awesome" and "awe" in relation to St Paul's Cathedral, LiR. Charles II  supposedly* described Wren's masterpiece as "awful, pompous, and artificial", by which he meant roughly, awesome, majestic and ingenious or artistic.

* I say 'supposedly' as in the absence of any contemporary written record, the tale has several variants and is even sometimes ascribed to Charles' successors; James II, William III, or to Queen Anne (who was on the throne when the cathedral was officially completed). Nevertheless Charles II's royal warrant authorising the construction to Wren's design, does state: "... among divers Designs which have been presented to Us, We have particularly pitched upon one, as well because We found it very artificial, proper, and useful; as because it was so ordered that it might be built and finish’d by Parts: We do therefore by these Presents signify Our Royal Approbation of the said Design, hereunto annexed...

MM, so "awful" is one of those words which has changed its meaning over the years?  In the development of languages thread nordmann kindly explained the meaning of "lent" as an adjective (I had asked the question when I was reading a rather old-fashioned translation of Einhard's book about Charlemagne.  I suppose if I was a good little (or middle-sized) history enthusiast I should have attempted to read the said work in its original Latin but I have largely forgotten my O Level Latin so I don't know how well that would have worked.

For interest, my "word of the day" for today has been emailed to me.  It is "fictile" - I would have assumed that meant something to do with fictional but apparently it means "of or relating to pottery".

This explanation of the meaning comes not from me but from Dictionary.com

"Some of the meanings of the rare adjective fictile are “capable of being molded; made of earth or clay by a potter; pertaining to pottery.” Fictile comes straight from Latin fictilis “made of or pertaining to earthenware, pottery, terra cotta,” a derivative of fictus, the past participle of the verb fingere “to shape (from clay, wax, molten metal, etc.), create, produce, transform.” Also from fic-, a variant of the Latin root fig-, Latin has fictiō (stem fictiōn-) “act of shaping or molding; pretense, personification; supposition, legal fiction” (English fiction). From fig– Latin has the nouns figūra “form, shape, composition, makeup” (English figure) and figmentum “something formed or devised; a fiction or invention” (English figment). Fictile entered English in the 17th century."

and an example given by Dictionary.com (which I understand to be an American site) is "The chief function of clay in the fictile arts is its partial fusion upon firing...…………..

Robert T. Hill, "Clay Materials of the United States," Mineral Resources of the United States, 1893 "

Another word I have come across today is something of a made-up word "scoodie" which means a hooded scarf - obviously a combination of scarf and hood.

Dictionary.com mentioned palindromes today.  [url=https://www.dictionary.com/e/palindromic-word/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WEDNESDAY Daily Email 2019 2020-02-05&utm_term=Daily]https://www.dictionary.com/e/palindromic-word/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WEDNESDAY%20Daily%20Email%202019%202020-02-05&utm_term=Daily[/url]

I hope the link works.  If not, although I'm not quoting the full thing the information included this word as the longest palindrome in English though I've always heard 'ratatatat' for a knock on the door [that's not a palindrome of course] "
The longest palindrome in English is often considered tattarrattat, coined by James Joyce in his 1922 Ulysses to imitate the sound of a knock on the door."

Yes, LiR I was aware that English had only relatively short words contrary to German and also Dutch

https://www.germanpod101.com/blog/2018/11/02/the-5-longest-words-in-german-and-their-meanings/

as: 

Siebenhundertsiebenundsiebzigtausendsiebenhundertsiebenundsiebzig

but the normal long words are also there as "Handshoe" (glove) and "Kühlschrank" (Dutch koelkast, French frigidaire English refrigerator, fridge)

The author says it is easy to learn German, because most words are English related, but he forget to say that nealy half of the words in English
are French or Latin related. 

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul, just mentioning that palindromes are words that read the same forwards and backwards.

madam

level

Dictionary.com gives a few more.  Noon and civic are examples given there.

OOPS LiR, I had to check first ...
But perhaps as an aside I added some information about long words in German and English to you ...?

Kind regards from Paul.

I don't think it's as long as the German word Paul quoted, but at school we were told that 'antidisestablishmentarianism' was then the longest word in the English language but there have been many years since then for another word to become English's longest word.

There must be plenty of medical names that are longer, such as 'pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis' (a lung disease caused by inhaling very fine ash and sand dust) but such words might be considered rather contrived, so how about 'floccinaucinihilipilification' (the action or habit of estimating something as worthless)?

And you mentioned palindromes. In Finnish there's the palindromic word 'saippuakivikauppias' (meaning a soapstone vendor). Last Sunday's date, expressed numerically was a global palindromic one, being the same forwards or backwards whether expressed as DD.MM.YYYY, or in US format as MM.DD.YYYY and even in the Chinese format YYYY.MM.DD. Palindroms can also be phrasal such as, 'A man a plan a canal: Panama', or the pseudo-Napoleonic one, 'Able was I ere I saw Elba'. Or how about this poetic one devised by the American comedian, actor and musician, Demetri Martin, which isn't complete gibberish (it sounds more profound if read aloud as a hammy Shakespearean Richard III soliloquy):

Dammit I’m mad.
Evil is a deed as I live.
God, am I reviled? I rise, my bed on a sun, I melt.
To be not one man emanating is sad. I piss.
Alas, it is so late. Who stops to help?
Man, it is hot. I’m in it. I tell.
I am not a devil. I level "Mad Dog".
Ah, say burning is, as a deified gulp,
In my halo of a mired rum tin.
I erase many men. Oh, to be man, a sin.
Is evil in a clam? In a trap?
No. It is open. On it I was stuck.
Rats peed on hope. Elsewhere dips a web.
Be still if I fill its ebb.
Ew, a spider… eh?
We sleep. Oh no!
Deep, stark cuts saw it in one position.
Part animal, can I live? Sin is a name.
Both, one… my names are in it.
Murder? I’m a fool.
A hymn I plug, deified as a sign in ruby ash.
A Goddam level I lived at.
On mail let it in. I’m it.
Oh, sit in ample hot spots. Oh wet!
A loss it is alas (sip). I’d assign it a name.N
ame not one bottle minus an ode by me:
"Sir, I deliver. I’m a dog"
Evil is a deed as I live.
Dammit I’m mad.

That's impressive, MM.  Seen on Yahoo today - though I think it originates from Reuters.  "London's financial district sees few signs of Brexodus." I suppose it's early days yet but I haven't seen "Brexodus" before.

I can't compete with MM's impressive examples of palindromes but I learned today (not a new word but new way [to me] in which the word is used) that the name for a group of meerkats is a 'mob' - a mob of meerkats does have an alliterative ring.

Not a new word - but I've been watching a few videos about shoe-making the old-fashioned way and I didn't realise that besides "So and so came last in the race" as in the sense of in the final place that 'last' as a noun could also mean to cite Wikipedia "A last is a mechanical form that has a shape similar to that of a human foot.  It is used by shoemakers and cordwainers in the manufacture and repair of shoes".

I'm not long in after sign language class and getting a few groceries.  Something in my emails (pertaining to International Women's Day) had a new (to me) made up word "sheroes" - I cringed, what on earth is wrong with saying heroine?

I haven't encounted the word sheroes before but I imagine that it is intended to be non gender specific and yet inclusive of both. Heroine is clearly female only and while I have seen hero used to include women, in the same way that actor is increasing being used to refer to both men and women, hero (and actor) still have the historical baggage of being specific to males only. Hence the desire in some quarters to make up new titles. But quite frankly I think there are more important things to worry about at the moment.

Well yes that's true, MM (and maybe my fellow Res Historians don't need to know about my pet peeves).  Thinking of things that are perhaps more pertinent to March 2020 while they are not strictly speaking "words"  two new signs we've learned in BSL are the ones for coronavirus and for the B word.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Not a new word - but I've been watching a few videos about shoe-making the old-fashioned way and I didn't realise that besides "So and so came last in the race" as in the sense of in the final place that 'last' as a noun could also mean to cite Wikipedia "A last is a mechanical form that has a shape similar to that of a human foot.  It is used by shoemakers and cordwainers in the manufacture and repair of shoes".

Hence the saying "Let the cobbler stick to his last"
ps - the "cordwainer" is one practices "Cordoban work" - in Britain at least, the "cobbler" could only repair shoes, the leather work of new ones was for the cordwainer to do. Some interesting bits & pieces on the trade can be found in the Leather Museum in Walsall.

Very true, but while making new shoes was the exclusive right of a cordwainer, a cobbler was still permitted to make cheap pairs of shoes by literally cobbling together pieces of old shoes.

From this week's Radio Times:
MUMPSIMUS
A word for a person who insists they are right despite all evidence to the contrary.
Reputedly derived from a monk who kept repeating the same mistake while reciting Quod ore sumpsimus, Domine by saying, the made up word, mumpsimus instead of sumpsimus.

Tyndale in 1530 used the word to describe those trying to annul Henry VIII first marriage as "all lawyers, and other doctors, mumsimuses of divinity"

New Radio Times word;

SNOTTINGER
Victorian word for a handkerchief.
Handerkerchief itself is made of Hand (obviously) and kerchief, an Anglicisation of the French word couvrechief, originally a woman's headdress, but over time came to mean a piece of cloth to wipe one's brow or nose.

Triceratops wrote:

New Radio Times word;

SNOTTINGER
Victorian word for a handkerchief.
Handerkerchief itself is made of Hand (obviously) and kerchief, an Anglicisation of the French word couvrechief, originally a woman's headdress, but over time came to mean a piece of cloth to wipe one's brow or nose.

Trike, of course I understand that: "n snotteraar" (they translate by snottiness) A piece of fabric where you put "snot" in... 

Of  course we have a difference in our dialect where we say "neusdoek"(nose cloth?) and the Dutch say: "zakdoek" (pocket cloth?)

Regards, Paul.

This weeks' word is

BUMF

Dating back to the 1600s, the words Bumfodder and Arse-wisp was used to describe toilet paper. Bumfodder was quickly shortened to Bumf and became a description for any unnecessary written material. The Victorians used the expression "a visit to the Spice Islands" to describe going to the toilet.

Trike,

if you start with expressions about "going to the toilet" we, with us many times common man language, have I guess at least 30, I haven't start to count the ones that I know...

And of course we have for that "other", I suppose as you in England, as many...I mean of course "the meeting" between two persons...

But let us not start with examples...

Kind regards from Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

Trike,

if you start with expressions about "going to the toilet" we, with us many times common man language, have I guess at least 30, I haven't start to count the ones that I know...

And of course we have for that "other", I suppose as you in England, as many...I mean of course "the meeting" between two persons...

But let us not start with examples...

Kind regards from Paul.

a) I'm sorry, but I have no idea what this post is about.

b) I am not in England.

Back to Priscilla's opening post the most overused word to me at the moment is "surreal". Everything unusual is surreal apparently.

This weeks RT word is

HUFFLEBUFFS

An old Scots expression for comfy familiar clothing used for simply lazing about doing nothing.

and in a similar vein

HURKLE-DURKLING
Lying in bed or lounging around when one should be up and about.

Today we have:

FURLOUGH

First recorded in the 17th century, it was used for soldiers being given permission to be absent for a certain period. Originating from the Dutch verlof and the German Verlaub both meaning permission granted as a sign of trust.

YAWMAGORP

From Lancashire, Yorkshire and Leicestershire, means a yawning and stretching person ie lethargic, which itself derives from the River Lethe of Greek Mythology, whose waters induced forgetfulness when drunk.

PETRICHOR 


Meaning "a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather." Apparently it only dates to 1964 when it was used in Nature, the scientific journal. Presumably there was no word for this before that, though it's hard to imagine the Germans didn't have a long word describing that. 


Where I live we don't often get long dry spells, though fortunately while we are in lockdown with two grandchildren aged 3 1/2 and nearly 2, there has been one. We've been able to be outside nearly every day. 

This week we have a few words related to the current lockdown.

Covidiot....a person who ignores social distancing rules

Quarantini.... drink cocktail made up of whatever is available.

Snaccident....inadvertently eating a whole packet of biscuits.

Covid-15....15 pounds in weight gained through continual eating/snacking

Doughverkill....surfeit of home baking photos on social media
and
Dinfluencer....someone who posts photos of their lockdown supper on social media.

Editing this as originally much too long. Someone critcised me on a forum yesterday for using the word 'one' as an impersonal pronoun. Over simplifying I said something (paraphrasing) like 'one has a right to an opinion' and got a demeaning retort that in someone else's opinion anyone who used 'one' in 2020 as a pronoun was a pompous a--hole.  I've used 'one' as an impersonal pronoun for years without thinking about it and I'm too old to change now.  My understanding is that the pronoun 'one' came from the same root as 'on' from the medieval French oblique case for 'hom' (man).  Not that I can read medieval French.

In the Spanish class today I came across the word 'boicotear'.  The literal translation I found was 'to boycott' but the teacher said that in the context where we read it today it meant 'to low platform someone'.  I don't know what that phrase means - probably it entails looking down on someone or overlook someone.  I'll probably be able to find it online if I look at an advanced dictionary - or maybe if I use Google Advanced Search or something similar to find an example of the phrase in a document or website.  Maybe the new additions section of an online dictionary might prove helpful.

I looked at some of my recent posts this morning and noticed some grammatical errors - I'm sure there was an extra 'with' somewhere but now I've logged in to correct it I can't find that particular error.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Editing this as originally much too long. Someone critcised me on a forum yesterday for using the word 'one' as an impersonal pronoun. Over simplifying I said something (paraphrasing) like 'one has a right to an opinion' and got a demeaning retort that in someone else's opinion anyone who used 'one' in 2020 as a pronoun was a pompous a--hole.  I've used 'one' as an impersonal pronoun for years without thinking about it and I'm too old to change now.  My understanding is that the pronoun 'one' came from the same root as 'on' from the medieval French oblique case for 'hom' (man).  Not that I can read medieval French.

 
LiR, of course I use "one" as the right English, I have learned, read and seen in novels...but yes it can be that I am not up to date anymore with the language used in 2020 and certainly not in English...

Kind regards, Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

In the Spanish class today I came across the word 'boicotear'.  The literal translation I found was 'to boycott' but the teacher said that in the context where we read it today it meant 'to low platform someone'.  I don't know what that phrase means - probably it entails looking down on someone or overlook someone.  I'm probably be able to find it online if I look at an advanced dictionary - or maybe if Iuse Google Advanced Search or something similar to find an example of the phrase in a document or website.  Maybe the new additions section of an online dictionary might prove helpful.

 
LiR,

"to platform" after a quick research...entangled in all kind of modern stuff, universities, business...is that Spanish teacher a modern youngster using all such kind of "new" English...

For "boicotear" it comes indeed as I thought from Captain Boycott:
https://okdiario.com/curiosidades/origen-significado-palabra-boicot-3549295

And so I am back to my comparison of the Irish and Flemish movement of the 19th century in another thread, where I said that the Irish one is much earlier and of a complete other calibre...and with the "Captain" I came right in the middle of the story again...and what a history...perhaps those of "Great Britain" know more of it than I, but I learn still each day about it...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Boycott
And even a film from 1947 about him:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Boycott_(film)



Kind regards from Paul.

May I plead that no politician should use the word 'unprecedented'.  We have had many plagues and viral infections over many centuries so our current situation is entirely precedented but, perhaps ,not predictable.

Hmm. I guess this is a Germanic dialect word, but can anyone place "Drachin" rather than "Drachen"?

Wouldn't drachin just be the female form of ein drache, a dragon (plural drachen, dragons), so eine drachin would be a dragoness, no?



Might your interest in "Drachin" be because it's the name of a steam locomotive, hence why it's specifically feminine?

Well, there's a steam link, but I think this particular dragoness would be out of place on rails - she was a train ferry!

But being a ship might be all the more reason why she's got a specifically feminine name, although I'm not sure whether a ship is traditionally referred to as 'she' in German - the noun, ein shiff, is masculine.

NORMAL

Derived from the Latin normalis meaning at a right angle, itself from the word norma, a carpenter's square consisting of two arms at right angles used to ensure straight edges.

A 1658 dictionary gives the definition "done exactly, according to the rule or square". From this comes the modern definition of a norm or standard set of affairs; conforming to a regular pattern.

ENORMOUS "out of" the "norm" ,originally something out of the ordinary, now something of unusual size.

COCK AND BULL

Traditionally originating from the competition between two coaching inns in Stony Stratford, which challenged each other to produce the most outlandish tales to trick passengers en route to London, it is more likely from the French coq-a l'ane, cock to a jackass, for a rambling story. An Old Scots word COCKALAYNE is a direct copy of the French, with the same meaning.

"Drachen" also means "kite" and was the name given to cylindrical shaped observation balloons of the German Army in WW1:

I assume the German use of dragon "drache" for a fixed observation balloon was direct from the use of the same word to mean both paper-and-string toy kites and also the larger man-carrying observation kites that had occasionally been used during the American Civil War and during the Franco-Prussian War. Ultimately I suppose it comes from the tethered paper/silk/bamboo 'kites', that were first developed in China, Japan, Indonesia etc, and that were often modelled on, and so called, dragons.

Meles meles wrote:

I assume the German use of dragon "drache" for a fixed observation balloon was direct from the use of the same word to mean both paper-and-string toy kites and also the larger man-carrying observation kites that had occasionally been used during the American Civil War and during the Franco-Prussian War. Ultimately I suppose it comes from the tethered paper/silk/bamboo 'kites', that were first developed in China, Japan, Indonesia etc, and that were often modelled on, and so called, dragons.

You are absolutely right, MM.

We call the toy kites also in our Flemish dialects (and I suppose also in Dutch): draak (or vlieger (kite)), German "Drache".
Nowadays the kites are more like the ones, as you mentioned from China, Japan and so on.

But in my time it was more like this:



In fact not entirely like this...there were two bamboo poles in cross in the dragon and some thin ropes underneath to stear from the ground.

Yes the Fifties on the beach near Ostend in the direction of Blankenberge, where it was in that time nearly without visitors.
My sister and I and an uncle...
I still remember that it was not easy to bring the dragon in the air, perhaps you needed more wind?...perhaps a lack of experience...and you don't believe it, while we were only a kilometer from the sea it was a rare occasion that we went to "de duinen" (the dunes?). On that place we had a belt of dunes of nearly 400 meters ( a quarter of a mile?). But our parents had it that busy in their daily work (fish merchants) that we had nearly no occasion to go there to the beach. And forbidden to go alone. We later learned that the parents were right, while even already in that time "the dunes" were a meeting place for all kind of "business". Really a "sexual" playground. I remember that we (my sister and I) saw, accompagnied by our parents, a naked couple (yes in that time) busy with the act. We quickly passed the scene. And perhaps you don't believe it, but I have never seen in my life one of our parents naked...

Kind regards from Paul.

OOPS, MM and I forgot to say that I looked for the origin in English and I think the same in Dutch and German. And I saw that it came from the Latin "draco"...

But then I thought on the words: draconic, draconian (Dutch draconisch)...from Draco...(Greek: Δράκων, Drakōn)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draconian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draconic_(disambiguation)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco_(lawgiver)

Ultimately I saw that "dragon" had not to see with the Greek lawgiver Draco, but is of PIE origin: to see...
https://www.etymonline.com/word/dragon
The one with the (deadly) glance...

For Draco (the Greek one) I have then only the explanation that it was: 
or the man's surname?
or that the Romans mixed Draco with the "dragon", as they saw Draco as a kind of "dragon"?

Kind regards, Paul.

"Dracon" in ancient Greek was used to infer "seeing clearly". The Athenian lawgiver's name may have been assigned to him on the basis of his political career and his ability to simplify what had been a very convoluted and often contradictory set of inherited laws into one all-purpose charter, so in fact had they used the term "Draconian" in those days it would likely have been intended as a huge compliment.

His main innovation - besides actually writing laws down for the first time - was to set up a tribunal that met in the open air on the Areios Pagos (the Hill of Ares) where people could petition publicly for justice, especially if they reckoned his laws and punishments as written down didn't quite fit their particular cases - the first "Supreme Court" that we know of. Dracon however limited the scope of this tribunal only to those cases which, in a very Greek manner, reflected the most deadly serious issues as understood generally at the time and all of which carried a potential death penalty or enforced slavery as punishment for the guilty. These were:

Homicide
Personal injury
Blasphemy
Arson
Olive trees

His laws lasted two centuries before they were revised. Interestingly the revised version deleted homicide from the tribunal's scope. Crimes against olive trees remained however.

nordmann wrote:

"Dracon" in ancient Greek was used to infer "seeing clearly". The Athenian lawgiver's name may have been assigned to him on the basis of his political career and his ability to simplify what had been a very convoluted and often contradictory set of inherited laws into one all-purpose charter, so in fact had they used the term "Draconian" in those days it would likely have been intended as a huge compliment.

His main innovation - besides actually writing laws down for the first time - was to set up a tribunal that met in the open air on the Areios Pagos (the Hill of Ares) where people could petition publicly for justice, especially if they reckoned his laws and punishments as written down didn't quite fit their particular cases - the first "Supreme Court" that we know of. Dracon however limited the scope of this tribunal only to those cases which, in a very Greek manner, reflected the most deadly serious issues as understood generally at the time and all of which carried a potential death penalty or enforced slavery as punishment for the guilty. These were:

Homicide
Personal injury
Blasphemy
Arson
Olive trees

His laws lasted two centuries before they were revised. Interestingly the revised version deleted homicide from the tribunal's scope. Crimes against olive trees remained however.

 
nordmann, now I see there is the link. Now I understand.

nordmann I think that you have many times a lot of trouble to descend to these rather dummies of the board to explain it all. I thank you for doing the exercise.
And yes as usual coherent and to the point. I suppose that you have a "background", of which we have not the faintest idea...

Kind regards, Paul.