Of Tooth Extraction

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Oct 21 19:46:51 EDT 2002


At 6:20 PM -0400 10/21/02, Richard Ghilardi wrote:
>I was wondering, how WOULD the Greeks say, "He is having his tooth
>extracted"?
>
>Would it be, EKSPATAI TON ODONTA or hO ODOUS EKSPATAI?
>
>But the middle of this verb (as well as SPAW) was used in an active sense
>in Homer. So the above would mean, "He pulled out his tooth" or "His
>tooth pulled out (something)" or intransitively, "His tooth came out".
>Maybe if we use EXELKW...
>
>EXELKETAI TON ODONTA or hO ODOUS EXELKETAI
>
>"He is having his tooth dragged out" or "His tooth is being dragged out".
>
>Either way, it sounds pretty painful and not very pretty at that!

A tooth-extraction is not all that pretty in any case; it may be better
now, but I can still remember having my wisdom teeth extracted fifty years
ago!

Thanks, Richard. I wondered about these verbs, but then it occurred to me
that alternativeS would be XURAW, "shave" (the middle XURAOMAI having the
sense, "have oneself shaved") and KEIRW, "cut the hair" (the middle
KEIRASQAI having the sense "have one's hair cut").
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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