A debriefing on camels and dromedaries

Wed Apr 23 12:50:02 UTC 2008

At 4/22/2008 08:55 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>I wonder why it is that the article supplies the misinformation that
>_dromas_ means "*swift* runner," when it means merely "runner."

Is it possible that if the Greeks called something "a runner", it was
because it was good at running?  Don't we have the same semantics in
English today?  "He's a ___" (my mind fails of a good example).

Joel

>-Wilson
>
>On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 12:15 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> >  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >  Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> >  Subject:      A debriefing on camels and dromedaries
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >  <html>
> >  <body>
> >  <font size=3D3>Some time ago I asked about the distinction between
> >  "camel" and "dromedary", particularly in the 18th and
> >  early 19th centuries.  I now report:<br><br>
> >  Even lexicographers of the eighteenth century had difficulty! Both Nathan
> >  Bailey's <i>Universal Etymological English Dictionary</i>, in 1737 and
> >  through at least 1790 (after Linnaeus=92s 1751 classification), and Samuel
> >  Johnson=92s <i>Dictionary of the English Language</i>, from its first
> >  edition in 1755 through 1828, say there are three kinds of camels, one
> >  bunch, two bunch, and the dromedary. Bailey gives the dromedary two
> >  bunches; Johnson says there are two kinds of dromedaries, one with
> >  "two small bunches", the other with "one hairy eminence=94.
> >  Noah Webster=92s 1828 <i>American Dictionary of the English
> >  Language</i><a name=3D"_ednref1"></a> (its first edition) is consistent
> >  with modern nomenclature (<i>Grzimek=92s Encyclopedia of Mammals
> >  (1990)</i>, 5:110);<a name=3D"_ednref2"></a> Webster's
> dromedary, =93called
> >  also the Arabian camel=94, has one bunch, his
> >  Bactrian<a name=3D"_ednref2"></a> camel has two.<br><br>
> >  The site
> >  <a href=3D"http://www.livius.org/caa-can/camel/camel.html"
> eudora=3D"autourl=
> >  ">
> >  http://www.livius.org/caa-can/camel/camel.html</a> asserts:<br><br>
> >  "The confusion is easy to explain. The Babylonians and Assyrians
> >  were, as far as we know, the first to describe an animal known as
> >  gammalu. (A similar word, g=E2m=E2l, is used in the Bible.) This refers to
> >  the dromedary, which was originally called dromas, 'swift runner', by the
> >  Greeks. They saw the first representatives of this species in the sixth
> >  century [BCE], when the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Lydia
> >  (western Turkey). However, the Greeks also accepted the loan word
> >  kam=EAlos. So, they had two words to describe the same animal.<br><br>
> >  "This would not have led to confusion if they had not used the same
> >  pair of words to describe the [Bactrian] camel, which they first
> >  encountered during the reign of Alexander the Great (336-323) [BCE].
> >  Following the Greek example, the Romans ignored the difference as well:
> >  they called the animals dromedarius and camelus. The sharp distinction
> >  between the two animals is modern, but the official names are still a bit
> >  confusing: camelus dromedarius and camelus bactrianus."<br><br>
> >  Joel </font></body>
> >  </html>
> >
> >  ------------------------------------------------------------
> >  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
>--
>All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>-----
>  -Sam'l Clemens
>
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