homo aristophaneus
/ˈhɑmoʊ æɹɪsˌtɑfəˈniəs/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
27
Scrabble Score
17
Letters
6
Syllables
12
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A person with the characteristics and nature depicted in the comedies of the ancient Athenian playwright Aristophanes (c. 446 – c. 386 B.C.E.) as a literary figure, rather than a historically accurate Athenian person; an Aristophanic man.
Example Sentences
- "Lest we exaggerate the difference between classes in real life, let us remember that our problem is essentially literary, not sociological: to explain the difference not between real peasants and real aristocrats, but between homo Aristophaneus and homo Platonicus."
- "Despite insistence that he was dealing with the literary man (‘homo Platonicus’ and ‘homo Aristophaneus’), and not the real Athenian aristocrat or farmer, [Kenneth] Dover tended to overlook the literary conventions: Pausanias in the ‘Symposium’ is not ‘homo Platonicus’ but simply one of the characters in the dialogue (who represents a fairly conventional aristocratic view, according to all the evidence); Aristophanes’ world is presented through the rather murky glass of comic distortion and requires interpretation."
- "The evidence with which we must work is primarily artistic rather than popular. This means that what we will be examining is more homo Aristophaneus than real Athenian men and women, an artist's view of his world and the ways in which his imagination operated on the raw material of his life."
- "In 1964 [Kenneth] Dover thought abuse found in comedy and elsewhere revealed in homo Aristophaneus a different, more simple set of attitudes, and his work after 1964 can be seen as an attempt to apply the hostility towards sexual passivity he saw in this abuse onto the discourses of Plato and Aeschines."
- "We have to separate ourselves from Homo Aristophaneus of the 5ᵗʰ century B.C. The crucial difference is the use of pejorative language which we define as verbal references to certain areas of the human body which are considered social taboo – and therefore must be hidden, for we consider them "dirty". For Athenians, this was not something to be said in a euphemistic way, but as something to be enjoyed and talked about, as the human body was always available as a healthy and important part of life."
Etymology
PIE word *dʰéǵʰōm Learned borrowing from Latin homō Aristophanēus (literally “Aristophanean man”), not attested in Latin works: homō (“human being, person”) + Aristophanēus (“of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Aristophanes or his works”), possibly influenced by French homo aristophaneus (1951) and German homo aristophaneus (1959) which are attested earlier than the English term. Homō is ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European *dʰéǵʰōm (“earth; human”); Aristophanēus is borrowed from Ancient Greek Ἀρῐστοφᾰ́νειος (Arĭstophắneios, “of Aristophanes”), from Ᾰ̓ρῐστοφᾰ́νης (Ărĭstophắnēs) (from ᾰ̓́ρῐστος (ắrĭstos, “best”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂er- (“to be suitable, fit; to fix, put together”)) + -φανής (-phanḗs, suffix forming adjectives with the sense ‘appearing, seeming’) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂- (“to shine”))) + -ῐος (-ĭos, suffix forming adjectives with the sense ‘belonging or pertaining to’).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *h₂er-, *dʰéǵʰōm, Ἀρῐστοφᾰ́νειος, *bʰeh₂-
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈhɑmoʊ æɹɪsˌtɑfəˈniəs/
- British English: /ˈhɒməʊ æɹɪsˌtɒfəˈniːəs/
Frequently Paired Words
homo Platonicus