Monday, July 02, 2012

Epiphany and ?

Epiphany comes from the root verb phainein, "to show". The prefix "epi" means "to" or "on", i.e., an epiphany is a showing-to.

There must be a pangrammatical supplement. Epiphany is to philosophy as _________ is to poetry. But I fear I will have to resort to neologism.

First we must find the supplement of "show". It will be to "doing" as "showing" is to "seeing". When we are shown something we are meant to see it. When we are _____ed something we are meant to do it.

We are not ordered to do it, just as the showing does not force us to see anything. It is merely offered to us. So perhaps we are looking for something like implore, or beg.

As for the prefix, "epi-", it seems to me that we must replace it with "endo-", i.e., from within.

What we need, I think is a Greek word for "pleading-in".

"Deomai" seems to fit the bill, and it gives us "deésis" ("felt need", "urgent want") as well. So we've got our word: endodeésis, which would mean literally "an urgently felt inner need", a "pleading from within". It might be suitably anglicized as endodesy.

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