Michael said:
Michael Wojcik wrote:
Antistrephon cuts both ways.
Misspelled.
Wrong.
That is a different term. I wrote antistrephon, and I meant
antistrephon. Or more precisely, while some rhetoricians use
"antistrophon" for both, and the OED (incorrectly, IMO) cites only
the latter as a separate entry, other rhetoricians use both terms
distinctly. See for example Lanham's _A Handlist of Rhetorical
Terms_. [...]
Besides the OED, other dictionaries I've checked
list antistrophon but not antistrephon. I haven't
found any dictionary that lists antistrephon.
That's because they're nearly all copying the same source - the
_Century Dictionary_, which in turn is apparently just parrotting
Milton. (Long rightly criticizes the OED for this.) Milton is not
the supreme authority on rhetorical terms coined from Greek roots.
Dictionaries are rarely useful references for terms of art. They're
general reference works.
A Google search for antistrophon definition yields
over 600 hits; a search for antistrephon definition
yields only 30 hits, and a lot of those are in a
language other than English.
The web is even more general, and even less useful in this matter,
than dictionaries - with the exception of Long's helpful essay.
Of course it's possible that you're right and
the rest of the world is wrong.
Or that I can be right about this and "the rest of the world" not be
wrong, since we've not seen an opinion from the vast majority of the
world; 2) at least one reputable source (Lanham), presumably of this
world, agrees with me; and 3) the relative popularity of
"antistrophon" says absolutely nothing about the possible use of
"antistrephon".
They're derived from different - albeit cognate - roots:
strefw (sigma-tau-rho-epsilon-phi-omega): apparently strengthened
form of trepw, an early form of "to turn", also the root of trope
("turn")
-strofhv (sigma-tau-rho-omicron-phi-eta): root of various nouns
(anastrofe, etc) derived from strefw
The shift in the final vowel accomodates Ancient Greek's inflections
for declension. My guess is that the shift in the penultimate vowel
is either for euphony or simply the result of transposing the two
vowel sounds. But Greek isn't my field.
The difference between omicron and epsilon might seem slight, but
it is a real difference.[1]
But it does
seem a little unfair to criticize the poster
for concluding that the word is misspelled.
It seems perfectly fair to me, since it was correct - the word was
not misspelled, and his conclusion was wrong.
Now, Al Balmer posted the *suggestion* that the word was misspelled;
that's perfectly reasonable.
And I'll certainly grant that hoi polloi seem to have latched onto
antistrophon, despite its myriad and inconsistent employments. And
there is a school of thought that Lanham is rather too idiosyncratic.
So I might agree that others might use "antistrophon" as I used
"antistrephon" and garner no shame by it. But I can hardly stand
silently by and see my loyal "antistrephon" so vilely defamed, can I?
[1] Omicron is a circle, and epsilon is a semicircle plus a radius,
so their difference is pi minus 1, or about 2.14159.
--
Michael Wojcik (e-mail address removed)
Unfortunately, as a software professional, tradition requires me to spend New
Years Eve drinking alone, playing video games and sobbing uncontrollably.
-- Peter Johnson