Thursday, May 26, 2005

Behold the Man

Good old linguistic pedantry sometimes pays off:

"Homo" and "Anthropos" are the general words meaning human being in Latin and Greek, respectively. In English, the generic term "man" can also mean one male human being, which I believe "yeoman" used to signify. Those dopes who rewrite "ad hominem" as "ad feminam" reveal their ignorance in their attempts at self-aggrandizing pseudosophistication. The first isn't sex-specific, but the second is.

I will now keep in mind that it's "Ecce Homo" and not "Ecce vire" every time I see a battered Christ.

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