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Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Conservatism in Vocabulary?

Georgios P. Antoniou and Andreas N. Angelakis, "Latrines and Wastewater Sanitation Technologies in Ancient Greece," in Piers D. Mitchell, ed., Sanitation, Latrines and Intestinal Parasites in Past Populations (Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 41-67 (at 45):
It is interesting to note that many of the terms used for defecation in ancient Greek are still in use in the modern Greek language.21

21 Angelakis et al. 2005.
This seems to be a reference to A.N. Angelakis et al., "Urban wastewater and stormwater technologies in ancient Greece," Water Research 39 (2005) 210–220, but I don't see any mention of "terms used for defecation" in that article.

On Latin words for defecation and excrement and their survival in modern languages see J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 231-244.

Attic red-figure kylix attributed to the Ambrosios Painter (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. RES.08.31b):
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