In checking a term in Liddell and Scott, I was interested to see "pankalkeos" defined as "all-brazen", being used to think of "kalkos" (χαλκός) as meaning primarily "bronze". And indeed in the main article on "kalkos", the lexicon says that antiquity did not know what we call brass, an alloy of copper and zinc. But evidently the ancients were loose in their designations, sometimes using "kalkos" for unalloyed copper, sometimes for what we call bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. The Romans were likewise free in their use of "aes". No doubt the purchasers of metal products were quite precise in specifying what they wanted and in checking what they received, though.
"Brass" does not quite sound as impressive as "bronze". Partly I suppose this owes to I Corinthians 13, partly to the colloquial use of "brass" for money or for effrontery. But it was the term that earlier English made do with, and that is why the Authorized Version used "brass" for "kalkos". The OED's earliest citation for "bronze" in the modern sense is from 1739; and in 1755 Johnson used "brass" in his definition of bronze.
I wish there was a like button - I liked this but have nothing interesting to add, apart from mentioning a dread of looking "brassy" - that is, obviously dyed hair, loud clothing, cheap jewellery, drunken behaviour etc etc
ReplyDeleteSorry that was me, ZMKC
ReplyDeleteUnderstood. I think that "brassy" may have fallen out of American usage. The characteristics you mention remain popular, and I suppose not just here.
DeleteI have just began to read Publish & Perish, on your recommendation (5 or so years ago). There is a Derrida quote at the start that is among the most baffling paragraphs I've ever read. If you still have a copy of the book, will you look & see if you can make sense of the quote. I am wondering if it is just me. ZMKC
DeleteGood heavens! I think that I have long given away my holdings of Hynes's books, or lost them to lending. I'll have to run it down.
DeleteIf I knew how, I'd put a screenshot of it here.
DeleteClearly you take the Jerry Seinfeld view on books (in an early episode his character claims you should chuck a book once read ("What is it with books?" he asks, or something along those lines))
Clearly? Downstairs I have a copy of Two Years Before the Mast, purchased probably in 1967 or 1968, reread ten years ago. Upstairs I can find half a dozen books purchased no later than 1975, some looked into or reread in whole in the last twenty years.
DeleteSpace is finite, though, and we do part with books at times--sometimes wittingly by donating them, sometimes unwittingly by lending them to persons who never return them, sometime after water damage from broken pipes.
By the way, Emerson reports that Landor did not have much of a library--he gave books away after reading them.
It's ZMKC once again by the way.
ReplyDeleteUnderstood. The sample of the book provided at Amazon extends to the quotation from Derrida. My guess is that it means that systems of one sort or another try to control the disruptive nature of written text, but that the text fights back.
DeleteI should say that markings suggest that I once made it through about a dozen pages of Grammatology, call it 4% of the book. I have read Writing and the Difference and Clang (Glas), but they did not create the feeling that I had to hurry back and finish Grammatology