

Jan 23, 2013 This week's theme

Eponyms



This week's words

silhouette

casanova

xanthippe

shrapnel

Don Juan



Xanthippe pouring water over Socrates. He's supposed to have replied: After thunder comes rain. Art: Reyer Jacobsz van Blommendael (1628-1675) Discuss

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Xanthippe or Xantippe PRONUNCIATION: (zan-THIP-ee, -TIP-)

MEANING: noun: A nagging, ill-tempered woman.

ETYMOLOGY: After Xanthippe, wife of Socrates (c. 5 century BCE) who has been portrayed as a nagging, quarrelsome woman. The name Xanthippe is from xanthos (yellow) + hippos (horse). Also see xanthodontous . Earliest documented use: 1691.

NOTES: Socrates is said to have advised, "By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher." It's not known what Socrates thought would happen if the roles were reversed. Also, there's the question of which came first: philosophizing or being ill-tempered. Would being married to a philosopher turn a woman into a shrew?

USAGE: Mistress Foster is a grasping shrew, a Xanthippe, who bosses her husband about."

Jean Howard; Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy; University of Pennsylvania Press; 2009.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the human heart can hold. -Zelda Fitzgerald, novelist (1900-1948)





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