• epicene •
Pronunciation: ep-ê-seen • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: 1. Having characteristics of the other sex, especially effeminate, dandyish. 2. Androgynous, bisexual, transsexual, suitable for or having characteristics of both sexes, unisex. 3. Having characteristics of neither sex. 4. (Linguistics, nouns) Having fixed grammatical gender but referring to both sexes, as Russian sud'ya "judge" has fixed feminine gender but refers to male and female judges.
Notes: Here is a word that is the epicenter of the biological ideas that have crept into politics. Epicenism refers to the state of having the characteristics of both sexes. No other derivations seem to have made it to print.
In Play: "Sexless" is one of the senses of today's word: "With her epicene figure, Madeleine resembled a priestess of Artemis." The meanings above need not apply only to people: "Once the public insisted on single-sex colleges, but attitudes shifted in the 1960s in favor of epicene colleges."
Word History: Today's Good Word was created in Old English by jiggling Latin epicoenum, a word the Latin grammarians used to refer to words with fixed grammatical gender that could refer to either sex. Latin had copied its word from Greek epikoinon with the same meaning. The Greek word breaks down into epi- "on(to), upon, at" + koinos "common", source also of English koine "the standard dialect of a region". Koinos comes from PIE k'om- "by, besides, at, (together) with", source also of Latin cum "with, by" and com- "(together) with", Albanian kë- "(together) with", Irish chomh- "so" and comh "mutual, common", Breton ken "so", Russian s(o) "with". [K'] is a variant of [k] that remained [k] in eastern PIE languages, like Latin centum [kentum] "hundred" but became [s] in eastern languages like satam in Sanskrit and sto "hundred" in Russian and other Slavic languages. (Now yet another word of thanks to Professor Kyu Youm for today's very topical Good Word.)
