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Today we have not one but two terms that were made up from Greek words and were coined in England. This time in 1865 by banker, philanthropist, scientist and polymath John Lubbock. He helped establish archaeology as a scientific discipline and promoted the need for public libraries, among other things. In his study of archaeology and the need to clearly distinguish Stone Age periods, he formed two new words. Παλαιό (paleo) in Greek means 'old' and Νεο (neo) means 'new' . Λίθος (lithos) means 'stone'. The combination seems fairly simple to us now but the concept is genius! The division of the Stone Age into ΠΑΛΑΙΟΛΙΘΙΚΟΣ & ΝΕΟΛΙΘΙΚΟΣ/PALAEOLITHIC & NEOLITHIC

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(Intro & piano music)

Aristotle used this word in his definition of Greek Drama and in particular Tragedy
Έστιν ουν τραγωδία, μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας και τελείας...' This is tragedy, the imitation of a significant and absolute act. Richard Dawkins used it to coin a new term in 1976 and according to Wikipedia 'it is an idea, behaviour or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme' Well, in today's digital and visual language, it has taken the form of a short image-burst, that may or may not have words but it's an imitation of an idea, action or vibe. ΜΙΜΗΣΗ/MEME

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(Intro & piano music)

Happy November, everyone! We're still in Halloween mood here in the UK so, I've decided to follow up from last week's word. This is probably one of the most accurate yet creative modern namings of a medicine I know. We touched upon this god on a couple of episodes with his name mentioned in the last one but I've never told you his story. He was one of the first gods. Son of night and Sleep, nephew of Death (and I'm here to correct myself calling them brothers last week) , two of his thousands of siblings were Fear and Fantasia, also known as Dreams and although they had wings, he didn't need them. His purpose was to deliver messages to mortals from the other gods. His name comes from the word Μορφή (morfi) which means 'Shape' , because he would shape into anyone in order for the message to be more effective. According to the Roman writer Ovid, he would sleep on a bed of poppies and that's were the German pharmacist Friedrich Serturner who isolated the substance in 1804, got the idea for the name. The substance that would ease your pain, cause you to hallucinate or be deadly. If you haven't guessed it yet, the name of the god is Morpheus and the medicine ΜΟΡΦΙΝΗ/MORPHINE

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