Apple triumphs over Microsoft! Time to celebrate—it’s the joy of victory, the agony of defeat. The Greek agein, “to lead” gave us agon — an “assembly,” into which people were led to witness the public games.

Once comfortably seated, you watched the Agonia, “the contest or struggle for the prize” and your favorite agonistes, “contender” — creating our first antagonists, those you rooted anti, “against” and the protagonists, those you rooted pro, “for.”

Eventually, agonia came to describe not the struggle but the mental and physical anguish experienced in its course. Agony then extended to “any activity fraught with difficulty or pain;” later, “anguish” and “intolerable pain,” before arriving at its current definition —“any extreme suffering of body or mind.”

For sheer agony you went to Rome for gladiatorial contests — extremely violent events held in amphitheaters, the floor of which were covered with sand to lend stable footing and absorb the blood of the combatants. Over time, the sand and the fighting area became linked — making harena, Latin for “sand,” into the arena — the field of play or the actual building or stadium where sporting events are held. No accident that the corporate arena is now the area of greatest bloodletting.