Philos -- Love

Our first word for our blog about words was Logos, which means "Word" in Greek.  How about for the second word, we choose Philos, which means "Love" in Greek?

From Philos, we get:

Philosophy -- Greek Philos + Sophia "Wisdom" = "The Love of Wisdom" or "The Study of Wisdom."

Philanthropy -- Greek Philos +  Anthropos "Human Being" = "The Love of Human Beings" or in our society, giving money to charity.

Our suffix -phile come from Philos.  Adding -phile to a word means "someone who loves a certain thing."  So...

Anglophile - "Someone who love the English or English Culture."
Francophile - "Someone who loves the French."
Bibliophile - "Someone who loves books."
Logophile - "Someone who loves words."  In other words, me.

In Chemistry and Biology, we talk about substances as being hydrophilic "water loving" or hydrophobic "water fearing."  A hydrophilic substance is one that mixes easily with water.  A hydrophobic substance does not mix with water, for example, oil is hydrophobic.

Philip -- Greek Philos + Hippos "Horse" = "Lover of Horses"  Apparently, the first guy named Philip really liked horses!

Good SAT or GRE word:  A Philippic is "a fiery and condemning speech or tirade."  This word comes from the speeches that Demosthenes (a famous Greek orator) made condemning King Philip II of Macedon in the 4th Century B.C.  Philip, by the way, was the father of Alexander the Great.

                                                Demosthenes practicing oratory on the beach

Introduction - Logos, the word for word

This blog will be dedicated to learning about the Latin and Greek roots of words.  Once you know these roots, the language you speak takes on so much more meaning, because you hear the ancient clues about meaning in the words you speak.

Today's root:  Logos.   Very appropriately, the Ancient Greek word for... "word."

In English, we use this word as a suffix to mean "the study of", or more literally, "words about..."

Anthropology -- from Greek Anthropos "Human Beings" + Logos = "The Study of Human Beings and their Cuture"

Biology -- from Greek Bios "Life" + Logos  = "The Study of Life."

Geology -- from Greek Geo "Earth" + Logos = The Study of the Earth."

Psychology -- from Greek Psyche "Mind" + Logos = "The Study of the Mind."

Zoology -- from Greek Zoon "Animal" + Logos = "The Study of Animals."

Our word Zoo, is short for Zoological Garden.


A couple more words that come from Logos:

Monologue -- Greek Monos "Alone" + Logos "Word" = "Words spoken alone"

Philology -- Greek Philos "Love" + Logos "Word" = "Love of Words."  Philology is the study of words.

That's enough for today!