www.alphadictionary.com

Posted: **Sun Mar 26, 2006 10:44 am**

Azygous vein is called Vena azygos in Latin. Azygos is the genitive of a rare Classic Greek noun "azyx."

The Aristotelian passage is in Pol. 1253a: Aristotle compares the cityless man (απολις) to an isolated piece in a game of 'pettoi' (ατε περ αζυξ ων νσπερ εν πεττοις). The curious word αζυξ occurs at a much later period in Agathias' epigram on Zeno's game of ταβλη , where it means a 'blot' at backgammon, i.e. a single piece standing unguarded by a companion and therefore liable to capture. But the commentators are surely wrong in supposing that Aristotle had the race-game in mind; the word in the context, and the comparison introduced between the 'cityless' man and the pugnacious Homeric warrior (I agree with Jackson in assigning the comparison not to the αζυξ ; but to the απολις) both suggest that he meant the battle-game, 'poleis'.

http://gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/Archive ... index.html

Could fellow Agorans advise the gender of the noun? I could not find the word in any of the online Greek dictionaries.

Posted: **Mon Mar 27, 2006 10:28 am**

I know no Greek at all, so I can't even judge if it's helpful that it isn't inflected in its arch, arcus venae azygos.

Posted: **Mon Mar 27, 2006 10:55 am**

Anders, indeed "Irren ist männlich."

It turned out that azygos is an adjective in Greek. Liddell & Scott, Greek-English Lexicon refers to "φλεψ αζυγοs vena azygos (Gal.15.529)". The class of adjectives beginning with the negative prefix a- have the identical masculine and feminine forms.

AND, I had to be more careful before complaining about meagre search results on the Internet. Yes, I will use breathing and accent marks before making search (already written so 100 times in my mental blackboard).

Bit off the colour,
Flam

Posted: **Wed Mar 29, 2006 1:17 pm**

Of course I couldn't help but think of zygote. Trying to understand the link between an isolated fertilized cell in a mother's womb and this description of a game piece that was isolated... The negating a- prefix had me curious and somewhat confused, until I remembered that the zygote was the product of the fusion of two other reproductive cells. So, indeed, it was not isolated, but rather fused. In that context, azygos makes sense to me. Just thought I'd share my rambling thoughts...

-Tim

Posted: **Fri Mar 31, 2006 4:53 am**

A-zygos
Free tranclation in Greek: -free-something or someone- like this agora.