1/2/23
I did an etymology search on a few basic words, today.
These were all greek words which I use all the time.
I like that it seemed I discovered something new to me.
Category.
This one has “agora” in it. That tipped me off that there’s something almost “public” about it. I’ll come back to this “public” sense.
Ousia.
We don’t really have an English word for this. We use “nature” a lot of times. Etymologically, it’s simply a participial form of the greek verb “to exist” or “to be.” I won’t, here, parse the difference between being and existence. Rather, it’ll suffice to understand that we’re talking about reality, as it is, in itself.
Prosopon.
Here’s where it gets fun. “Pros” plus “ops” (I can’t find the greek characters on my keyboard. “Ops” is the face or the countenance itself. “Pros” in composition puts that face against or towards another. It implies relation, in other words.
Hypostasis:
That which remains on the bottom. It’s a nice contrast with Prosopon, because while their both often translated “person,” here, hypostasis seems to focus more inwardly, substantively, as opposed to outwardly or relationally/relatively.
Back to category. In Latin it’s predicament. Either way it’s committing, publicly, in speech, openly in words, as it were, to a certain description. The “Agora” is the assembly.
