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Gigantomachy

Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 10:34 pm
by Dr. Goodword

• gigantomachy •

Pronunciation: jai-gæn-tah-mê-kee • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. Ancient Greek battle of the titans against the god of the heavens, Zeus. 2. A war of giants, a battle between titans of any ilk.

Notes: Although this Good Word is seldom seen in print today, there should be use for it in this period of hostile takeovers, struggles between government and corporations, and similar struggles between financially powerful individuals and organizations.

In Play: Titans today are rich people who like to push others around with their wealth: "After a rather drawn-out gigantomachy between Rupert Murdoch and the Bancroft family behind the scenes, the Australian media mogul finally acquired the Dow Jones company and its Wall Street Journal." If the struggle is between two nations, the level of power is considerably higher: "The Cold War was a gigantomachy between two superpowers with incompatible politico-economical systems."

Word History: Today's Good Word came from the title of a poem by Claudian, Gigantomachia. It is a compound comprising gigas (gigant-) "giant" + mache "battle". The origin of Greek gigas is a mystery, but we see it in various forms in English borrowings, where gig(a)- has become a prefix meaning "billion": gigabyte, gigahertz. In fact, it is becoming a noun on its own: "I have a gig of memory in my computer" for gigabyte. Giant is the result of French smoothing out gigant in its own inimitable way. Gigant remains the word for "giant" in Russian and gigante in Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Mache is probably related to English might in the sense of "power, strength", but the evidence is thin.

Re: Gigantomachy

Posted: Tue May 07, 2013 6:16 am
by MTC
The first mouse-like mammals cowered in the shadows while Jurassic giants like T-Rex and Stegosaurus engaged in a bloody gigantomachy.

It's easy to overlook minimachy and nanomachy, gigantomachy's diminuitive cousins.

Apocryphal, all.

P.S. "nanus" is the Latin word for dwarf, always spelled with lower case letters.

P.P.S. Could those ancients write or what! For instance, " they writhe their hissing course," "they breathe forth thick vapour from their soot-black nostrils," "Suddenly the stars grow pale."

Re: Gigantomachy

Posted: Tue May 07, 2013 11:18 am
by LukeJavan8
They most assuredly could write and without
computers, blacberries, hand-helds, ipods,
text-speak, tablets, kindles and their ilk.
One wonders the future of literature.

Re: Gigantomachy

Posted: Tue May 07, 2013 12:13 pm
by Perry Lassiter
Nanus always spelled with lower case letters? Note the capital.

Re: Gigantomachy

Posted: Tue May 07, 2013 1:50 pm
by MTC
A joke, Perry, a joke. "Dwarf," lower case letters. Perhaps I shouldn't try so hard.

Re: Gigantomachy

Posted: Tue May 07, 2013 2:18 pm
by Perry Lassiter
FY(future)I: always assume any post I make is seldom serious. Ergo I do the same with most people, including all those I really like.