16 May 2024

The Greeks have a word for it:
41, Idiotic, Ιδιωτικός

Ιδιωτικός Χώρος means ‘Private Parking’ – not ‘Idiotic Place’ … a sign at Lofos Apartments in Piskopianó in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

I have done some idiotic things in my days. I wrote recently about how I once left travellers’ cheques behind and had to rush to open a bank account in Hersonissos in order to salvage a three-week stay at Mika Villas in Piskopianó in Crete.

But I have also left a camera behind, and I have left luggage and clothes at hotels in Japan and Turkey.

I jumped into a swimming pool at an hotel in Limassol in Cyprus at the age of 35, only to realise as I hit the water that I had avoided learning how to swim at school 20 years earlier.

I felt idiotic one year when I came down a tall and fast slide at Acqua Plus Water Park, the biggest waterpark in Crete, not knowing how to stand up in the water as I reached the end of the slide.

Some of my friends even thought I was idiotic at the age of 63 to take an early morning balloon flight above the ‘fairy chimneys’ in Cappadocia.

Perhaps it was idiotic of me never to have learned how to drrive. I managed to take about 30 or so driving lessons in the Terenure and Rathfarnham area of Dublin around 1978 or 1979. If you want to see idiotic driving or idiotic parking, simply put me behind the driving wheel.

On a sunny afternoon last month, as I was walking down the hillside from Piskopianó to Hersonissos, a sign outside Lofos Apartments reminded me how much words can change their meaning and significance when they are adapted from Greek into English.

The sign says Ιδιωτικός Χώρος, meaning not ‘Idiotic Place’ but ‘Private Parking.’

Today we use the word idiot unkindly to denote a person of low intelligence or a stupid, even foolish person. The word has come into English through Old French from the Latin idiota, meaning an ‘ignorant person’, and that in tuns comes from the Greek ἰδιώτης (idiōtēs), a private person, as opposed to the state, a lay person a private citizen or amateur as opposed to a government official, a professional person, or an expert.

Fyodor Dostoevsky had a nuanced understanding of the word ‘idiot’ in The Idiot, first published in 1868-1869. The title refers to the central character, Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, whose goodness, open-hearted simplicity, and guilelessness lead many of the more worldly characters to mistakenly assume he lacks intelligence and insight.

Myshkin is completely aware that he is not an ‘idiot’ in any pejorative sense. But most of the other characters at one time or another refer to him disparagingly as an 'idiot', although nearly all of them are deeply affected by him. In truth he is highly intelligent, self-aware, intuitive, and empathic.

He is someone who has thought deeply about human nature, morality and spirituality, and is capable of expressing those thoughts with great clarity. Dostoevsky is depicting ‘the positively good and beautiful man’ at the centre of the conflicts, desires, passions, and egoism of worldly society.

The word idiot was never used in classical Greek in a derogatory way to refer to an ignorant, unlearned or unlettered person. It comes from the adjective ἴδιος (idios), meaning one’s own, private, not shared, as opposed to public.

In a similar way, the English word ‘idiom’ comes from Middle French idiome, and its Late Latin source, idioma, from the Ancient Greek ἰδίωμα (idíōma), a peculiarity, property, a peculiar phraseology, idiom; from ἰδιοῦσθαι (idioûsthai), to make one's own, appropriate to oneself; and from ἴδιος (ídios), one’s own, pertaining to oneself, private, personal, peculiar, separate.

The word idiotic is from Greek Ιδιωτικός idiotikos, meaning private as opposed to public. It is only when the word is adapted in Latin, and developed in French and English that it begins to have the meaning it has today.

The term ‘idiopathic’ derives from Greek ἴδιος (idios), ‘one’s own,’ and πάθος (pathos), ‘suffering’. So, idiopathy means something like ‘a disease of its own kind.’

In medicine, an idiopathic disease is any disease with an unknown cause or mechanism of apparent spontaneous origin. With idiopathic medical conditions, the causes may not be readily apparent or characterised. Certain medical conditions, when idiopathic, notably some forms of epilepsy and stroke, are preferentially described by the synonymous term cryptogenic.

Pulmonary sarcoidosis is a typical interstitial lung diseases with unknown etiology that could be described as idiopathic. It is a condition I have been living with since at least 2008, and probably even longer.

Even here, the word sarcoidosis comes from the Greek σάρκο- (sarco-), meaning ‘flesh, (e)ido from the Greek εἶδος (-eidos), meaning ‘type’, ‘resembles’ or ‘like’, and -sis, a common suffix in Greek meaning ‘condition’. In other words, the whole word sarcoidosis means ‘a condition that resembles crude flesh.’

Meanwhile, if you still think it was idiotic of me to tumble down the slide in the waterpark near Hersonissos like that on a summer holiday in Crete, or to take an early-morning balloon trip in Cappadocia, all I can say is: ‘I did it my way.’

Previous word: 40, Praxis, Πρᾶξις

Next word:: 42, Pentecost, Πεντηκοστή

I have done some things in the water and in the air that others may regard as idiotic … a decorative mural at Villa Synergy in Hersonissos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in Easter 2024:
47, 16 May 2024

The church bells at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Platanias, near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season that continues until the Day of Pentecost next Sunday (19 May 2024). We are in an in-between time in the Season of Easter, between Ascension Day and the Day of Pentecost, and Sunday was the Seventh Sunday of Easter (Easter VII), or the Sunday after Ascension Day.

Today (16 May), the Calendar of the Church of England remembers the life and witness of Caroline Chisholm (1808-1877), Social Reformer.

Throughout this Season of Easter, my morning reflections each day include the daily Gospel reading, the prayer in the USPG prayer diary, and the prayers in the Collects and Post-Communion Prayer of the day.

Before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

3, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The church bells at Saint Nektarios Church in Tsesmes, near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 17: 20-26 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 20 ‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 24 Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

25 ‘Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’

The church bells in Panromos, near Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 15 May 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Triangle of Hope.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (16 May 2024, International Day of Families) invites us to pray:

Lord of justice and righteousness, please bring hope to the broken-hearted, and give us grace to administer justice where there is injustice; strengthen us to speak truth to power and resist the oppressor. May we find unity at the foot of your Cross. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.

The Collect:

O God the King of glory,
you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ
with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven:
we beseech you, leave us not comfortless,
but send your Holy Spirit to strengthen us
and exalt us to the place where our Saviour Christ is gone before,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Eternal God, giver of love and power,
your Son Jesus Christ has sent us into all the world
to preach the gospel of his kingdom:
confirm us in this mission,
and help us to live the good news we proclaim;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Risen, ascended Lord,
as we rejoice at your triumph,
fill your Church on earth with power and compassion,
that all who are estranged by sin
may find forgiveness and know your peace,
to the glory of God the Father.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The church bells at Agia Irini Monastery near Rathymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org