Fun fact about the Greeks thinking Prometheus's name meant "forethought" - that's actually a folk etymology. The pro is a much older use of the prefix that meant "away", not "before", and the root is actually meth-, "to steal". Prometheus is "the one who steals away, the thief", and seems to go back to a Proto-Indo-European thief/trickster myth.
Pro-meth- also has a perfect cognate in Sanskrit pra-math- "to steal".
It's just hilarious to me that the Greeks built an entire mythology around Prometheus being the foresighted one, to the extent that they even made up a brother for him meaning "afterthought", all based on a folk etymology!
3 Comments
hakase@lemmy.zip · 17 pts · 1y
Fun fact about the Greeks thinking Prometheus's name meant "forethought" - that's actually a folk etymology. The pro is a much older use of the prefix that meant "away", not "before", and the root is actually meth-, "to steal". Prometheus is "the one who steals away, the thief", and seems to go back to a Proto-Indo-European thief/trickster myth.
Pro-meth- also has a perfect cognate in Sanskrit pra-math- "to steal".
It's just hilarious to me that the Greeks built an entire mythology around Prometheus being the foresighted one, to the extent that they even made up a brother for him meaning "afterthought", all based on a folk etymology!
ObstreperousCanadian@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 1y
I'm not pro-meth. That shit destroys lives!
zedgeist@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 1y
Why do so many memes come with reactions these days when they're so much better on their own?