{"id":212,"date":"2006-04-30T22:37:21","date_gmt":"2006-05-01T03:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/63.247.138.3\/~drweevil\/?p=212"},"modified":"2007-09-03T18:12:26","modified_gmt":"2007-09-03T22:12:26","slug":"any-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/?p=212","title":{"rendered":"Any Questions?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/therat.blogspot.com\/2006_04_01_therat_archive.html#114635166808417014\">The Rat<\/a> wants a feminine equivalent of \u2018avuncular\u2019.  That\u2019s easy:  \u2018materteral\u2019.  According to the Random House <a href=\"http:\/\/www.randomhouse.com\/wotd\/index.pperl?date=19971119\">Word of the Day<\/a> site, the word is listed only once in the <em>Oxford English Dictionary<\/em>, but is actually older (1823) than \u2018avuncular\u2019 (1831).  They also note that Latin had different words for aunts and uncles on the father\u2019s and mother\u2019s side of the family:  you father\u2019s brother and sister are your <em>patruus<\/em> and <em>amita<\/em>, your mother\u2019s are your <em>avunculus<\/em> and <em>matertera<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>They do not note that the etymologies of three of these are transparent:  your <em>patruus<\/em> is a second father (<em>pater<\/em>), your <em>matertera<\/em> a second mother (<em>mater<\/em>), and your <em>avunculus<\/em> a lesser grandfather (<em>avus<\/em>).  In <em>Anthropology and Roman Culture. Kinship, Time, Images of the Soul<\/em> (tr. J. Van Sickle, Johns Hopkins, 1991), Maurizio Bettini gathers the evidence that the father\u2019s siblings were \u201cwere expected to maintain an attitude of discipline, harshness and aloofness\u201d, while the mother\u2019s were stereotypically \u201cwarm and affectionate even to the point of indulgence\u201d (both quotations from Matthew Slagter\u2019s review, <a href=\"http:\/\/ccat.sas.upenn.edu\/bmcr\/1992\/03.02.02.html\">here<\/a>).  It appears that The Rat will soon be an <em>amita<\/em> rather than a <em>matertera<\/em>, but \u2018amital\u2019 is not an English word, and I imagine she\u2019s planning to be more materteral anyway.  I recently learned that I will soon be a <em>patruus magnus<\/em> (great-uncle), but I plan to defy the etymologies and be greatly avuncular.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Rat wants a feminine equivalent of \u2018avuncular\u2019. That\u2019s easy: \u2018materteral\u2019. According to the Random House Word of the Day site, the word is listed only once in the Oxford English Dictionary, but is actually older (1823) than \u2018avuncular\u2019 (1831). They also note that Latin had different words for aunts and uncles on the father\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orbilius"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}