Mind your language
`MUMMY,' said Veronica, who was watching motor-racing on television, `why isn't Damon Hill called Damian like everyone else?' `Do turn it down, dear. Of all the mindless sports. Well, ever heard of Damon and Pythias?'
`Nope.'
`Go and look them up, then.'
After the next crash, Veronica reluc- tantly went in search of Brewer's Dictio- nary of Phrase and Fable, leaving me to ponder the ever deeper ignorance of the Classical world among the young. Not that I'm a walking Lempriere, and I suppose it's possible that Mrs Hill named her fast-moving son after the goatherd in Virgil's Eclogues and the connection with Pythias had never crossed her mind.
But, even on a verbal level, how many times have you heard criteria used as a singular; and there's this necrotising fasciitis germ which is called a bacteria; and people write hypothermia as hyper- thermia, which is the opposite; and there's all the confusion between the prefixes dis- and dys-: dys- is rather fash- ionable these days, what with dyslexia, dysfunction (a bastard formation of Greek and Latin) and dystopia. The last is meant to be the opposite of utopia, though I prefer cacotopia, but in any case Thomas More's Utopia means nowhere (from ou plus topos), not a nice place (from eu).
`Mummy, can I call the guinea pigs Damon and Pythias?'
Dot Wordsworth
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