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Henry George Liddell. Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. Revised and augmented throughout by:
Sir Henry Stuart Jones; with the assistance of: Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940.
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Plato's Letters
Socrates: Well, ..., if anyone could imitate th[e] essential nature
of each thing by means of letters and syllables, he would show
what each thing really is, would he not? [424a]
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[426c]
Socrates: First, then, the letter rho seems to me to be an
instrument expressing all motion. We have not as yet said why motion
has the name kinêsis; but it evidently should be
iesis, for in old
times we did not employ eta, but epsilon. And the beginning of kinêsis
is from kiein, a foreign word equivalent to
ienai (go).
So we should
find that the ancient word corresponding to our modern form would be
iesis;
but now by the employment of the foreign word kiein, change of
epsilon to eta, and the insertion of nu it has become
kinêsis, though it
ought to be kieinesis or eisis.
[426d]
And stasis (rest) signifies the negation of motion, but is called
stasis for euphony. Well, the letter rho, as I was saying, appeared to be
a fine instrument expressive of motion to the name-giver who wished to
imitate rapidity, and he often applies it to motion.
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