A Little Amateur Etymology

It's often easy to recognize roots of English words in Greek, and looking at the meanings of the roots can provide some clues as to who was doing what. Of course it's easy to get fooled too! Again, set me straight if I stray ! The Greek definitions come from Liddell and Scott and the Supplement to the Ninth Edition , and the English etymology from the OED . For notes on viewing this file check here .

• (klotho) is "I spin"; "I turn"; "I twist by spinning" (infinitive , klothein). The usage appears to have been mostly confined to weaving; so Klotho becomes the Fate who spins the thread. This twisting and spinning is quite literal: aligned fibers (of wool, cotton or flax) are twisted together by holding one end, fastening the other to a spindle, and turning the spindle.

• (Klothes) was a synonym for Moirai and meant "spinners". It may be this synonymy which leads some authors to suggest the Moirai simply spun, and did not weave .

• (atropos) comes from two roots, (a) meaning "want" or "absence", and (tropein). The latter and its relatives have a number of meanings derived from notions of turning. Literally, this would seem to make (Atropos) the Fate who "does not turn" (perhaps she wove?).

  • (tropos) is a noun, meaning "turn", "direction", or "way" (think of a road or trail). The meaning expanded to eventually include "manner", "fashion", or "guise" (think of young Athenian fops!), and "custom" or "way of life". And, natural to seafarers, the was also the "twisted thong that fastens oar to the thole-pins" .

  • (trope), is a noun: the "calendrical turning", or solstice; a "change" or "figure of speech", which is the usage from Aristotle which survives among us; a "rout (of an enemy)"; and the "turn of a ship", meaning the keel of those lovely curved diremes the ancients rowed and sailed).

  • (tropoo), a verb, is "I make to turn", "I put to flight" (in the context of routing armies), or "I furnish an oar with its twisted leather thong" .

  • By now you might think that atropia means "not to be turned", or "inflexibility", or "unchangeable" --- and you would be right (also "rigor" and "cruelty"). But it also carries the connotation of "eternal": so we end up with an inflexible, eternal Fate .

• (Lachesis) is related to words involved with the casting of lots and tombs . Both senses seem pertinent to the Fate who set the end boundary for life. (lache) is "a share in the father's tomb" (I guess an early version of the family mausoleum); and lachismos is "the casting of lots". Thus becomes the goddess of distribution, or the disposer of lots (destinies).

• (moira) The Greek had the everyday meanings of "portion", "lot", or "inheritance"; so one's was the plot of land inherited from one's father when the farm was divided and passed down to the offspring; or one's share of the wartime booty; or one's army division or political party. The word came to take on the broader connotations of destiny, and also of proper custom and order, by the time of the Homeric epics .