• DagwoodIII@piefed.social
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      1 day ago

      " ‘Waterloo’ means a complete and utter defeat. The French Emperor Napoleon lost everything at the Battle of Waterloo."

      “Why did he go there, if the town had such an unlucky name?”

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        At least he went straight there, unlike that other French guy always taking a roundabout way of getting somewhere. You know, Monsieur Detour.

      • tetris11@feddit.uk
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        1 day ago

        I have to admit that that’s an expression I’ve only heard in US circles. As an expression in England, it, well, has no meaning. We kicked some guy’s arse and lost our best general.

        • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
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          Funnily I don’t think I’ve heard Waterloo used that often, in French.
          Berezina is more commonly heard as a “complete and utter fuck up of epic proportions”. It’s the most memorable defeat in the entire retreat from Russia, which itself was a complete disaster.

          Waterloo was more of a swansong, since Napoléon had just come back to power after having abdicated, and he was hoping to prove he still had it. He did not.

      • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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        11 hours ago

        One of my favourite movies of recent years.

        After seeing it, I’ve been unable to see Chris Pine as anything other than Edgin. Star Trek? Wonder Woman? Still Edgin, just acting weird.

  • stray@pawb.social
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    According to Behind the Name Odysseus means “to hate.” According to Etymonline an odessey came to mean a journey in 1889, presumably as a reference to Homer’s story.

  • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
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    Odyssey roughly translates to “The story of Odysseus”, so yes, the name existed before Homer’s story. The semantic connection of odyssey and a long, dangerous and arduous journey came way after that.

      • Klear@quokk.au
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        1 day ago

        Odyssey no longer feels like a word. Damn you, semantic saturation!

        • PapaStevesy@lemmy.world
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          Wow, I really hate to be this pedantic, but it’s semantic satiation. I only remember because I had a similar experience thinking it was “saturation” because it just makes more sense, but apparently we’re wrong.

          • Klear@quokk.au
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            1 day ago

            No need to apologise, this is the kind of thing I hate getting wrong. Satiation. Satiation.
            Hopefully it will stick in the future.

      • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
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        The Odyssey was called Odysseia. The suffix -eia is an abstract noun suffix, so it’s sort of like a titular case for the name. Following the same logic, it would be Homereia and thus Homerey.

      • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
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        The Odyssey was part of the Epic Cycle, so Homer likely inherited the figure of Odysseus from those stories. Whether he made up the name or the name Odysseus was already established, we simply do not know. Much has been lost to time, sadly.

        • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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          12 hours ago

          Wether or not Homer’s writings are part of the Epic Cycle is very much a matter of… strong opinions of historians. There’s good reasons to include them (They’re about the same thing) and not to (Written later, and not lost, like all the other ones, so it makes the discussions annoying). We only know about most of the epic cycle because people wrote about the poems and made summaries and cliffnotes.

  • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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    Odysseus was a minor character in the first book before he became the main protagonist of the sequel. So yes, Odysseus was there before the Odyssey.

    • grissino@lemmy.world
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      Ackshually, The Odyssey is said to have been written before The Iliad, making the latter the prequel of the former.

      But since the name Odysseus was in use throughout Greece before the birth of Homer then yes indeed, Odysseus was there before The Odyssey.

      • altphoto@lemmy.today
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        23 hours ago

        Akchuly, My gramma’s great great…10 minutes later… Great grandma’s cousins friend was the first Odysseus ever to be born.

  • Annoyed_🦀 @lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    I’m gonna write a new book call Travelling Adventurer, and my protagonist is gonna called Traveour Venture.

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    I don’t understand memes like this that seem to be made by and for people who can’t use Google to find basic information

    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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      Because the meme isn’t about the actual facts. It’s about the joke at the end. Which you clearly missed.

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        1 day ago

        Really nothing on earth more Lemmy than people taking joke memes super seriously.

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        The joke only makes sense if you don’t have the actual facts or any desire to actually learn the

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          But I do have all the facts. And I find it amusing that someone wrote what appears to be the thoughts of, indeed, someone clueless about the whole thing.
          Which, you would be surprised, happens quite often!
          For instance my kids know Odysseus as Ulysse, in French. And so they have no idea that an “odyssée” is named after the king of Ithaca and his maritime adventures. It’s a mild joke about people knowing a word from one source and, seeing it appear somewhere else, assume a different relationship than what actually happened.

          Like if someone discovered that Kleenex is a brand and exclaimed “Wow! I can’t believe they can just trademark an everyday word like that!”
          Or, “OMG, I can’t believe Microsoft invented words ? Bill Gates is such a genius, OMG! But what did we call them in the past?! 🤯”

          Go ahead try it.

    • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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      Of course we can all google information. But it’s more fun to involve other people; especially if we find it funny.

    • tatann@lemmy.world
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      And I don’t understand why people call social media posts “memes”

      There, we both must be fun at parties

      • altkey (he\him)@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 day ago

        This screencap can spread and have a life of it’s own separate from whatever context the post has. It is a meme to me, but this kind of memes is sure not created by artisan mememakers.

      • mika_mika@lemmy.world
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        The world and society as we know it is, and has always been, just vibes. Absolutely nothing is real.

      • RanryuuRain@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        AI summary Ad Ad AI article Wikipedia 🙇‍♂️ AI article Reddit post

        Exaggerating, but in the worst cases that’s about what you’ll see.

        • TheOakTree@lemmy.zip
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          You forgot to add the SEO-optimized AI slop websites that rehash information in the least useful way.