{"id":345,"date":"2009-07-02T23:58:15","date_gmt":"2009-07-03T03:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/curculio.org\/?p=345"},"modified":"2009-07-03T00:24:17","modified_gmt":"2009-07-03T04:24:17","slug":"government-by-clowns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/?p=345","title":{"rendered":"“Government by Clowns”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent post at Chicago Boyz<\/a>, David Foster asks “what the proper Greek would be for ‘government by clowns'”. There are several possibilities:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A bo<\/u>molochos<\/em> was originally “one that waited about the altars, to beg or steal some of the meat offered thereon” (Liddell-Scott), but it acquired a less specific meaning “clown, buffoon”, which was standard in derivatives like the verb bo<\/u>molocheuomai<\/em>, “play the buffoon, indulge in ribaldry, play low tricks”, though the idea of begging may be included. So perhaps the best word for “government by clowns” would be bomolocharchy<\/strong> (0 Google hits).<\/li>\n
  2. Since our rulers live at our expense, how about a word that means “one who eats at the table of another, and repays him with flattery and buffoonery”? Compounded with “-archy”, that would give us parasitarchy<\/strong>, whose meaning will be clear even to the Greekless.<\/li>\n
  3. Another possibility would be an animal metaphor for clownishness. The Greek word for ‘ass’ (donkey, not butt) is ónos<\/em> (plural ónoi<\/em>), so the shortest word for “rule by clowns, buffoons, asses” would be onarchy<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
  4. The other meaning of English ‘ass’ also provides a very approximate equivalent for ‘clown’, and you don’t need to have studied Greek to figure out what proctarchy<\/strong> would mean.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I’m sure there are other possibilities, but I can’t seem to find my English-Greek Dictionary at the moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In a recent post at Chicago Boyz, David Foster asks “what the proper Greek would be for ‘government by clowns’”. There are several possibilities: A bomolochos was originally “one that waited about the altars, to beg or steal some of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology","category-orbilius"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":347,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}