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Jun 13, 2019
This week’s themePeople who have had multiple words coined after them
This week’s words
Socratic method
Midas touch
philippic
herm
A herm of Demosthenes
Sculpture: Polyeuktos, c. 280 BCE
Photo: Bibi Saint-Pol/Wikimedia
Photo: Bibi Saint-Pol/Wikimedia
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Gargherm
PRONUNCIATION:
(huhrm) 
also herma (HUHR-muh), plural hermae (HUHR-mee) or hermai (HUHR-my) or herms
also herma (HUHR-muh), plural hermae (HUHR-mee) or hermai (HUHR-my) or herms
MEANING:
noun: A square pillar topped with a bust.
ETYMOLOGY:
After Hermes, the god of roads, boundaries, eloquence, commerce, invention, cunning, theft, and more, in Greek mythology. Earliest documented use: 1579.
NOTES:
In ancient Greece, herm was a stone pillar with a square base. It had a bust of Hermes at the top and a phallus at the appropriate height. It was typically used as a boundary marker, milestone, or signpost.
USAGE:
“Her head bows, again by accident, in its direction, as though to a totem, or a herm.”
Adam Gopnik; This Odyssey of Ours; Town and Country (New York); May 2017.
See more usage examples of herm in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.
Adam Gopnik; This Odyssey of Ours; Town and Country (New York); May 2017.
See more usage examples of herm in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry. -William Butler Yeats, writer, Nobel laureate (13 Jun 1865-1939) What are your thoughts? Click here to share.
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