hUSTERA and hUSTEREW
Alex / Ali
alexali at surf.net.au
Wed Feb 21 06:30:38 EST 2001
James Wilk wrote:
>As a physician, my first exposure to ancient greek was through medical words;
specifically the greek hUSTERA, meaning womb/uterus as in hysterectomy and
hysteria (a mental condition originally thought to be limited to women and
caused by the womb wandering through the abdomen). When I began to learn
biblical greek, I was struck by the similarity of forms of hUSTEREW, meaning
to lack something (cf. John 2.3 KAI hUSTERHSANTOS OINOU, LEGEI hH MHTHR TOU
IHSOU...) and hUSTERHMA, meaning poverty (used to describe the state of the
widow in Luke 21:4, ...hAUTH DE EK TOU hUSTERHMATOS AUTHS PANTA TON BION hON
EICEN EBALEN). Does anyone know if somehow the words for uterus and for
poverty/lacking share some distant derivative? If so, what is the connection
between them and how did a uterus become associated with poverty?
hUSTEREW means 'be behind or later' and hence 'fall behind' and this gives rise to the sense 'come later than, come too late for' and to 'lack' ('the early bird catches the worm' but the late bird goes without, so to speak), and, of things, 'fail' (as the wine running out); hUSTERA is a feminine noun derived from the adjective hUSTEROS, meaning (of place) 'coming after, behind', of time 'next', 'later than, after', etc.; the hUSTERA was 'behind' whatever the physicians of the time understood to be in front. So there was, apparently, a tenuous connection of ideas.
I can only say that when (some years ago) I mentioned these things to my wife (who is a scientific officer for a pathology program here in Australia) she was not amused that hysteria was limited to women; but if memory serves aright, it was only late in the 19th century that that idea was over-turned. Is that right?
Alex Hopkins
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