History questions not worth their own thread III

[ParkCungHee]

I'm pretty sure that amount of time is plenty for various dialects to have branched off.

I come at this mostly from a late antique Roman-centric angle, and a non-linguistic one at that.

I'm just saying that from a post-roman Irish angle, this is sounding kinda iffy.

 

[LightSpectra]

Just curious: what did the word "battery" originally mean, an artificial unit of energy storage or an artillery placement, and how did it come to mean the other?

 

[say1988]

Battery as a term for a group of artillery pieces definitely predates the electrical battery. I believe that the term for electrical batteries came as a "battery of cells" as opposed to a "battery of guns" much as today you may face a "battery of tests" during a physical.

 

[Cutlass]

This is what a battery originally looked like.

 

[Dachs]

Yeah, "battery" describes a group of things in other contexts, too, like the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery), the test you take to figure out what you're going to be doing in the armed forces.

 

[Lord Baal]

The test I took to see if I could become an Air Force linguist was refered to as a battery. Can't remember the exact name though,.

 

[LightSpectra]

I also remembered that "battery" can be the participle of "battering" (i.e. "assault and battery").

So do these meanings have anything in common, or is this just a linguistic coincidence?

 

[Plotinus]

They all ultimately come from the French batre (to beat). It produced the Middle English batri, meaning metal that had been beaten in a forge. You can see how that leads to the artillery "battery", and thence to the array in general, including the array of electrical cells; while the legal "battery" comes direct from the original meaning of the French.

 

[Scirano]

question: were togas originally roman or greek

 

[Plotinus]

Roman, because Greeks didn't wear togas at all.

In fact the toga was based on Etruscan clothing, but it was closely associated with Rome.

 

[Scirano]

so what did the greek wear that resembles a toga

 

[Arakhor]

I believe the phrase you're looking for is the "chiton".

 

[Plotinus]

The Romans wore the same thing (they called it "tunica"). The toga was a larger, heavier thing that was worn over the tunic. It was basically the Roman equivalent of a big coat and was not something you wore all the time. As far as I know there was no Greek equivalent to the toga.

 

[GoodGame]

They all ultimately come from the French batre (to beat). It produced the Middle English batri, meaning metal that had been beaten in a forge. You can see how that leads to the artillery "battery", and thence to the array in general, including the array of electrical cells; while the legal "battery" comes direct from the original meaning of the French.

I found this from some etymologies:

battery Look up battery at Dictionary.com
1530s, "action of battering," from M.Fr. batterie, from O.Fr. baterie (12c.) "beating, thrashing, assault," from batre "beat," from L. bauttere "beat" (see batter (v.)). Meaning shifted in M.Fr. from "bombardment" ("heavy blows" upon city walls or fortresses) to "unit of artillery" (a sense recorded in English from 1550s). Extension to "electrical cell" (1748, first used by Ben Franklin) is perhaps via notion of "discharges" of electricity. In obsolete baseball jargon battery was the word for "pitcher and catcher" considered as a unit (1867).

http://www.word-origins.com/definition/battery.html

battery
Word History

Date of Origin 16th c.
The original meaning of battery in English was literally ‘hitting’, as in assault and battery. It came from Old French batterie, a derivative of batre, battre ‘beat’ (from which English also gets batter (14th c.)). The ultimate source of this, and of English battle, was Latin battuere ‘beat’. The development of the word’s modern diversity of senses was via ‘bombardment by artillery’, to ‘unit of artillery’, to ‘electric cell’: it seems that this last meaning was inspired by the notion of ‘discharge of electricity’ rather than ‘connected series of cells’.

Etymology of the English word battery
the English word battery
derived from the Old French word batterie
derived from the French word battre
derived from the Old French word batre
derived from the Latin word battere (pound, beat, hit)
derived from the Latin word battuere (pound, beat hit, strike)
using the Proto-Indo-European prefix bhau- (to hit)
derived from the Old French word baterie
derived from the Old French word batre
derived from the Latin word battere (pound, beat, hit)
derived from the Latin word battuere (pound, beat hit, strike)
using the Proto-Indo-European prefix bhau- (to hit)
Date
The earliest known usage of battery in English dates from the 16th century.
Cognates
Dutch batterij, French batterie, German Batterie, Italian batteria, Lithuanian baterija, Norwegian batteri, Polish bateria, Provençal bataria, Russian бaтapeя, Spanish bateria, Swedish batteri
Usage
Word found in Modern English

I'd prefer to think that all modern evolved uses come from beating something up!

 

[Ajidica]

How did the "V for Victory" hand-gesture come to be associated with the 60's counterculture movement as a symbol for peace? I checked wikipedia and they didn't say.

 

[Traitorfish]

The Romans wore the same thing (they called it "tunica"). The toga was a larger, heavier thing that was worn over the tunic. It was basically the Roman equivalent of a big coat and was not something you wore all the time. As far as I know there was no Greek equivalent to the toga.

I'm guessing he means the himation or the pallium? Pretty much any round-the-waist-and-over-the-shoulder cloak that isn't actually tartan gets lumped in as a "toga" in popular culture.

 

[GoodGame]

How did the "V for Victory" hand-gesture come to be associated with the 60's counterculture movement as a symbol for peace? I checked wikipedia and they didn't say.

Kind of related and kind of interesting:
http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/co...vey-smith-to-you/the-asian-v-sign-in-progress

The palm-forward V-sign was first used to represent peace in the US in the 1960s, by people campaigning against the war in Vietnam, such as Yoko Ono. Although she is Japanese, Ono probably learned to make the sign in America. How this gesture, previously standing for victory, came to mean "peace" is yet another mystery.



One theory is that the gesture was popularised in Japan by the US figure skater, Janet Lynn, during the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo. Although she came third in the event, and fell over on the ice, she captured the hearts of the Japanese public with her constant cheerfulness - Japanese children are also encouraged to be cheerful at all times. A peace campaigner, Lynn was photographed many times making the peace sign, and people began to copy her.


The V-sign has now spread to young people in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea, probably due to the Japanese influence. One reason for its popularity is that it is so easy to do.

This makes me think the hippies read Crowley (plausible) and were trying to be humorous:

British Occultist Aleister Crowley claimed to have invented the usage of a V-sign as a magical foil to the Nazis' use of the Swastika in February 1941. He maintained that he passed this to friends at the BBC, and to the British Naval Intelligence Division through his connections in MI5, eventually gaining the approval of Winston Churchill. Crowley pointed out that in his 1913 publication Magick a V-sign and a swastika appear on the same plate.[30]

I find it plausible in part because I've heard neo-hippies talking about it, and his bio makes him sound like an early hippie, basically.

 

[Lord Baal]

I don't recall any hippies crucifying toads to "destroy the power of Christ."

 

[Racsoviale]

If you have to fight the MAN, you might as well go all in and make some sacrifices to Cthulhu

 

[GoodGame]

Cause he's trendy liberal stuff that appeals to disenfranchised youth!

http://www.angelfire.com/ga3/thelema/crowley/flexipop666.htm

And importantly, he was an influence on the hippies-era musicians!