A syllabus
(/ˈsɪləbəs/, AFI: /ˈsɪl.ə.bəs/; pl.: syllabuses or syllabi
is a document that communicates information about an academic course or class and defines expectations and responsibilities.
It is generally an overview or summary of the curriculum.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word syllabus derives from modern Latin syllabus 'list', in turn from a misreading of the Greek σίττυβος
sittybos
(the leather parchment label that gave the title and contents of a document), which first occurred in a 15th-century print of Cicero's letters to Atticus.
Earlier Latin dictionaries such as Lewis and Short contain the word syllabus, relating it to the
non-existent Greek word σύλλαβος,
which appears to be a mistaken reading of syllaba 'syllable'; the newer Oxford Latin Dictionary does not contain this word.
The apparent change from sitty- to sylla- is explained as a hypercorrection by analogy
to συλλαμβάνω (syllambano
'bring together, gather').
___
Joseph Campbell
Noam Chomsky
Chaucer, Melville, Bronte, Dickinson, Plath
Dr Spock, Irma Rombauer
Beowulf
Pagels
Goethe
Plato
Shakespeare
Georgia O'Keefe
Jung
Nag Hammadi
Austen
Hardy (Tess of the Dubervilles)
'bring together, gather'
"Chambers Dictionary agrees that it derives from the Greek for a book label, but claims that the original Greek was a feminine noun, sittybā, σίττυβα, borrowed by Latin,
the misreading coming from an accusative plural Latin sittybas."
No comments:
Post a Comment