APPENDIX HI
THE GREEK LEGACY
WHAT follows are Greek words with roots which survive in words of
our own language and in scientific terms which are international. The
latter include especially medical words and names of classes or genera
of animals and plants, many of which will be familiar to the reader
who has an interest in natural history Greek abounded in compounds
and words with derivative affixes Loan words often come directly
from a combination of elements indicated separately by the reference
number of each item The most important Greek affix which does not
occur as a separate word is a- (without) Generic and class names
listed below have an initial capital letter, as do proper names
Use of a Greek dictionary in order to find the origin of a technical
term involves knowledge of the conventions of romamzed spelling,
and the order of the signs of the Greek alphabet, a, /}, y, 8, e, £, 77,
#, 63 /c, A, jit, vs f, o, TT, py cr($-), r, vy <j), fo if;, a) The Greek aspirate is
the transposed apostrophe c written before an initial letter Thus
'a = ha> *p = rh. Dictionaries do not separate words with aspirated
from words with unaspirated initial vowel The transcription of the
peculiar Greek consonants is as follows ^ = ps, x~°h> £ ^ z>
<f> = ph, g = x If y comes before a guttural (y, £, %) it is equivalent
to ». Thus yy = ng. The Latin transcription of K is C, but some
modern words render it as K, The equivalents of the simple vowels are
€ = e, 77 = e or a, a = a, i = iy o or & = o and v = y. The conven-
tions for the double vowels are ov = u> a = 2, ai = ae> and 01 = oe or
e. The final KZ of many Greek substantives becomes y in English.
When the stem of other case-forms of a noun or adjective is
longer than, or different from, the nominative the following rule
holds good The nominative form occurs in % final syllable, elsewhere
the stem. Thus from (233) aams (aspis—nominative) and curmSos-
(aspidos—genitive) we get tie zoological names Hemiaspis and Aspi-
docotyk From the nominative Bpig (thnx) and genitive Tpixos (inches)
we get the genera Ophwthnx and Tnchna Where confusion might
arise, the nominative and genitive forms of a noun appear below. An
asterisk (*) marks tibie genitive, if given alone.
The number of verbs listed is small, because the root which turns