Etymology Word of the Week – As some of you know, in addition to working in the Admissions Office, I also teach Latin at Saint Ignatius and am something of a "word nerd." Thus, each week, I’ll sneak a vocabulary word (sometimes derived from Latin, sometimes not) into the e-blast. Here then is this week’s edition of the Etymology Word of the Week.
Epiphany
Definition: “Christian feast day observed on January 6th that celebrates the revelation of Christ to the Gentiles in the form of the Three Magi; also known as Twelfth-Day" OR "any sudden, intuitive perception or discovery of the essence of something.”
Origin/Derivation: From the Greek epiphaneia meaning "manifestation or appearance of a god" which is derived from the prefix epi meaning "on, upon, to" and the verb phainein meaning "to show, to bring to light, to make appear."
Related Words/Phrases: cellophane, phantom, phantasm; epiglottis, epitaph, epidermis, epidemic, epitome, etc., etc.
Sample sentence: “A common trope of romantic comedies is for the main character to pursue one (often unattainable or disinterested) love interest, but to ultimately have an epiphany that he or she is actually the soulmate of another character - typically the one the audience has been rooting for all along.”
(All information is from www.wikipedia.org, www.etymonline.com and/or www.dictionary.com)
“Old Saw” of the Week:
See if you can “complete the phrase” of this time-worn (but true!) adage:
“Don’t look back…
(hint - the author is a baseball Hall of Famer with Cleveland ties)
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...Something might be gaining on you.”
(Leroy “Satchel” Paige, World Series Champion 1948, BBHOF 1971)