"Oh, ye immortal gods! what is theogony?
Oh, thou too, mortal man! what is philanthropy?
Oh, world! which was and is, what is cosmogony?
Some people have accused me of misanthropy;
And yet I know no more than the mahogany
That forms this desk, of what they mean; Lykanthropy
I comprehend, for without transformation
Men become wolves on any slight occasion."
I (knowing nothing about literature) really like this poem, the way it sounds and flows. What does it mean though? Is he just saying that despite man's intellectual achievements, at the end of the day we're just brutal beastial animals?
The narrator Don Juan is saying he's not an intellectual, and doesn't really understand the big words he's studied, but he does have life experience and has observed a lot of cruelty, which to him validates the old proverb "Man is wolf to man."
There is an additional joke in that the narrator's exhortations peripheral to each word all relate to that word's meaning. I don't know the poem, so can't say whether that is the narrator's joke or the author's, but it's not there by accident in any case.
The author uses the words "theogony," "cosmogony" and "philanthropy" because these are all high-minded topics whose aims in practice are to explain and justify things as they are; Byron is ironically suggesting that morality in this world is confined to academic discourse, without any application in real life, where things remain dog-eat-dog.
> Werewolf bar mitzvah
> Spooky scary
> Boys becoming men
> Men becoming wolves
> Werewolf bar mitzvah
> Spooky scary
> Boys becoming men
> Men becoming wolves
It's common for factual texts from the classical era to be written in verse, though less so in Rome than in India, where it was nearly universal. The Bakhshali manuscript: all verse. Panini's grammar: all verse. Most of the Tripitaka is in verse, too. Perhaps the reason is to make it feasible to memorize them, which doesn't require access to scarce writing materials, so that you can study them.
Man was the original gender-neutral word while wereman and woman referred to the sexes. Were-wolf was a literal combination of the words male-human + wolf.
The existence of the supposed Old English word “*wermann” is hypothetical; I often see an argument of symmetry made, but the word is not ever attested as far as I know. It does not exist in any dictionary or corpus search I tried; and I've seen multiple others say that they see modern speech of it, but cannot find it in a single actual O.E. text.
The word for male human was “wer”, for female human was “wīf”, and while “wīfmann” and “wīfcild” are attested, “*wermann” and “*wercild” remain hypothetical and are unattested.
Perhaps the word existed, and it would no doubt be understandable to any speaker of Old English, but it did not show up in any text, nor did any of it's descendants survive into modern English.
There is a general trend in languages for female terms to display markedness, consider that there is no term for a specifically male actor in modern English either, though in some contexts male terms display it, such as the coinage of the word “murse” to refer to a specifically male nurse.
Neutrality of words in actual use is not so simple, in any case, though it is true that the word could clearly be used to describe human beings regardless of sex, as it still sees use today:
> God ġesċōp æt fruman twēġen menn, wer and wīf.
> God created at the beginning, two men, a male, and a female.
Usage of “mann” in O.E. to identify a single, singular female man was quite rare, as it still is today, outside of compounds such as “crewman”, but some attestations do exist, similar to the Latin “homō”, for which it was similarly rare and other words were typically used.
One may be left to conclude that, though it was theoretically possible, it was stylistically not common, similar to how, perhaps, the word “actor” was used a century back where “actress” was quite often used for a female actor, al the while acknowledging that “an actor”, hypothetically speaking, could be any sex, and “actors” could easily be used for a mixed-sex group.
Werman might be barking up the wrong tree but you do get wapman (literally penis man, same root as weapon) showing up alongside wifmann. That says nothing about how common it was or whether it was the preferred form over man, but it's something.
https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/229884 (woman): OE (Northumbrian) Lindisf. Gospels: Matt. xix. 4 Quia qui fecit ab initio masculum et feminam fecit eos : forðon seðe worohte from fruma woepenmonn & wifmonn geworhte hia.
https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/225576 (wapman): 1123 Anglo-Saxon Chron. (Laud. MS.) Forbearn eall meast se burh of Lincolne & micel ungerime folces wæpmen & wimmen forburnon.
> Werman might be barking up the wrong tree but you do get wapman (literally penis man, same root as weapon) showing up alongside wifmann. That says nothing about how common it was or whether it was the preferred form over man, but it's something.
I'm sure you are referring to “wæpnedmann”[1] here, which is quite a different word, and did survive as “weaponed man”, which does exist but it's number of attestations are low.
The common words to refer to males and female humans simply seem to be “wer” and “wīf”; “wīf” is quite a bit more common than “wīfmann”, even during the middle English period.
Sorry about the links, if you have a library card from England, Scotland, or Wales your library most likely subscribes and you should be able to login using your library card number, outside of those countries there's a chance your library subscribes and you may be able to login but probably not. I did try to find an entry on Wiktionary but couldn't find one, although this time I found an entry on another dictionary that does appear to be accessible:
The quotations on the OED are in a similar Middle English time period from 950 to 1325, and the forms the OED lists are as follows:
Forms: Old English–Middle English wǽpman, wǽpnman, wǽpen-, wépenmon, Middle English wepman, ( Orm. weppmann), weopmonne, wepmon(ne, wapmon, wapman.
Etymology: Old English wǽpnman , < wǽpn weapon n. (= membrum virile ) + man man n.1 Compare Old English wǽpned adjective, male.
So it likely comes from 'wæpnedmann' but I couldn't find anything explicitly for that (or variations on spelling), maybe OE is a little too old for the OED or as you say maybe it just isn't that well attested, the closest I could find was the following:
OE tr. Alexander's Let. to Aristotle (1995) §29. 242 Ða gesawe we þær ruge wifmen, & wæpned men wæron hie swa ruwe & swa gehære swa wildeor [L. pilosos in modo ferarum toto corpore].
Perhaps 'werewolves' are a shapeshifter species that learned to mimic humans, not actual humans? It more plausible that human species isn't
entirely composed of biological humans than some magical transformation to a specific animal and back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimic_octopus
37 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 22.7 ms ] threadThere is a full video play-through on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybKV6rBfzV4&t=771s
And someone made an edited "movie" version of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-bryVavblw
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/42/81/b6/4281b602bc009999691b...
Medical poet. From his Wikipedia page:
> He wrote a long medical poem in Greek hexameter verse, consisting of forty-two books
I'm picturing Vitruvius from the LEGO Movie saying "All this is true because it rhymes" and it passing for esteemed medical advice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Were
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/woman#Etymology
The word for male human was “wer”, for female human was “wīf”, and while “wīfmann” and “wīfcild” are attested, “*wermann” and “*wercild” remain hypothetical and are unattested.
Perhaps the word existed, and it would no doubt be understandable to any speaker of Old English, but it did not show up in any text, nor did any of it's descendants survive into modern English.
There is a general trend in languages for female terms to display markedness, consider that there is no term for a specifically male actor in modern English either, though in some contexts male terms display it, such as the coinage of the word “murse” to refer to a specifically male nurse.
Neutrality of words in actual use is not so simple, in any case, though it is true that the word could clearly be used to describe human beings regardless of sex, as it still sees use today:
> God ġesċōp æt fruman twēġen menn, wer and wīf.
> God created at the beginning, two men, a male, and a female.
Usage of “mann” in O.E. to identify a single, singular female man was quite rare, as it still is today, outside of compounds such as “crewman”, but some attestations do exist, similar to the Latin “homō”, for which it was similarly rare and other words were typically used.
One may be left to conclude that, though it was theoretically possible, it was stylistically not common, similar to how, perhaps, the word “actor” was used a century back where “actress” was quite often used for a female actor, al the while acknowledging that “an actor”, hypothetically speaking, could be any sex, and “actors” could easily be used for a mixed-sex group.
https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/229884 (woman): OE (Northumbrian) Lindisf. Gospels: Matt. xix. 4 Quia qui fecit ab initio masculum et feminam fecit eos : forðon seðe worohte from fruma woepenmonn & wifmonn geworhte hia.
https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/225576 (wapman): 1123 Anglo-Saxon Chron. (Laud. MS.) Forbearn eall meast se burh of Lincolne & micel ungerime folces wæpmen & wimmen forburnon.
I'm sure you are referring to “wæpnedmann”[1] here, which is quite a different word, and did survive as “weaponed man”, which does exist but it's number of attestations are low.
The common words to refer to males and female humans simply seem to be “wer” and “wīf”; “wīf” is quite a bit more common than “wīfmann”, even during the middle English period.
Your links are not accessible, by the way.
[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/w%C3%A6pnedmann
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dicti...
The quotations on the OED are in a similar Middle English time period from 950 to 1325, and the forms the OED lists are as follows:
Forms: Old English–Middle English wǽpman, wǽpnman, wǽpen-, wépenmon, Middle English wepman, ( Orm. weppmann), weopmonne, wepmon(ne, wapmon, wapman.
Etymology: Old English wǽpnman , < wǽpn weapon n. (= membrum virile ) + man man n.1 Compare Old English wǽpned adjective, male.
So it likely comes from 'wæpnedmann' but I couldn't find anything explicitly for that (or variations on spelling), maybe OE is a little too old for the OED or as you say maybe it just isn't that well attested, the closest I could find was the following:
OE tr. Alexander's Let. to Aristotle (1995) §29. 242 Ða gesawe we þær ruge wifmen, & wæpned men wæron hie swa ruwe & swa gehære swa wildeor [L. pilosos in modo ferarum toto corpore].
“Child”, not “gold”; “wīfċild” meant female child, but there is no “werċild” attestation for “male child”.
```Werewolf Bar Mitzvah, Spooky scary, Boys becoming men, Men becoming wolves```