Dr. Metablog

I have just finished reading Sybille Haynes comprehensive study, Etruscan Civilization, A Cultural History (2000). It's not only a window into a remarkable extinct world, but also a trove of exciting words new to me. And as readers of this blague are well aware, vocabulary excites Dr. Metablog.

For example: a skyphos is a two-handled cup for drinking wine. Here's an especially handsome one from the 5th century BCE.

It's decorated with a portrait of a hoplite, a Greek soldier. 

Then there's the versatile word symplegma, which sounds suspiciously like a noxious bodily discharge — but isn't. If one searches for the word symplegma, the first meaning that one encounters is a "genus of ascidian tunicates in the family styelidae." What the heck are any kind of tunicates doing in a volume on  Etruscan civilization? But on further investigation it emerges that symplegma has a second and more pertinent definition. It's a word that is used by art historians and archeologists for a depiction of sexual intercourse. Honest to Pete, who would have guessed?  How the two symplegmata — the tunicate and the fornicate — are related, is, I must say, quite a mystery.

Another word with two distinct significations is tibia. We all know that the tibia is the bone that connects ankle and knee. I did not know that for students of ancient world it also refers to a brooch or clasp.  

Bucchero is the name of typical and common Etruscan ceramic distinguished by its burnished black glaze. Here's a bucchero oinochoe (or jug for wine).

Speaking of jugs, there's also the aryballos, which is a "globular flask" used to contain perfume or oil. Another kind of jug is the "canopic jar", which was used by the ancient Egyptians to store a guy's (or gal's) inner organs during the process of mummification. I have no idea how mummies were processed, nor have I any desire to be enlightened.

A coroplast was, in antiquity, an artisan or sculptor who created terracotta figurines. Here's a lovely example of such a one's work.

Nowadays, Coroplast, Inc. is the name of a large company that produces corrugated plastic sheets used in packaging and signboards.   

A felloe or felly is the outer rim of a wheel to which spokes are attached. I imagine that this word is well known to bicyclists and wheelwrights, but I had never encountered it. My chagrin, my apologies. An acroterion is an architectural ornament mounted at the apex of corner of a building, a kind of rooftop gargoyle. An anthemion or palmette is a design consisting of radiating petals. Sometimes anthemia are carved into acroteria. If two anthemia are set back to back they are said to be addorsed.