Antithalian

[Dr. Goodword]

• antithalian •

Pronunciation: æn-tee-thay-li-ên • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Opposed to mirth and festivity, deeply serious, morose.

Notes: This is an incredibly rare word. The Oxford English Dictionary has only one example from 1818 and it is altogether absent from Merriam-Webster's dictionary and most others. If you enjoy sending your coconversationalists to the dictionary, this is the word for you. It is, of course, a lexical orphan. For every word beginning with anti-, there is one without, however. So it is with today's Good Word. Thalian means "related to comedy, comic, humorous".

In Play: Here is the way we could use the word, if we wanted to: "I don't like funerals because most are so antithalian." Or this: "If the president's demeanor weren't so antithalian, claims that no one knew health care was so complicated wouldn't get as many laughs."

Word History: Today's word is the negative of the eponym, thalian, meaning "against Thalia". Thalia was the muse of comedy in ancient Greece. This name goes back to Greek thállein "to bloom, thrive, flourish". This verb comes from PIE dhal- "to blossom, become green", which became dalar "green, fresh" in Armenian and dal "go forth, spring out" in Albanian. The only possible evidence of it in Germanic languages is English dill and a possible cousin in Old Danish, dylle "dill". This is all the evidence of this word's history we have. (Now let's all thank the mysterious Grogie, a decade-long denizen of the Alpha Agora, for submitting today's extraordinarily arcane Good Word from the state of Michigan.)

[George Kovac]

"Antithalian"! What a great word! And so useful that I am surprised it is rare.

Antithalian should be filed in our minds with the group that includes "anhedonia," a Good Word of the day from 2006.

[George Kovac]

Here is another word I should have added to the set which includes "antithalian" and "anhedonia": "Agelast"--someone who never laughs. "Agelast" was the Good Word of the day back in 2011.

Humor and pleasure--two of the finest hallmarks of civilization, and qualities which are necessary to make us fully human--seem to be out of fashion right now. A geeky kind of debate has been raised in some literate circles as to whether "Brave New World" or "1984" is the more apt dystopian novel for our times. Hmmm. 1984 speaks of an impoverished grim anthithalian future, trapped in anhedonia and populated by agelists. But in Brave New World, there were plenty of material goods to enjoy--and everyone had Soma.

[Perry Lassiter]

Wonder whether the early Greek philosopher Thales gets derived here? Chief contribution to thought wad the idea that everything was water. He observed water also as steam or ice and changing. He thus challenged the common sense idea of an almost infinite variety of stuff. If you think that's weird, grab a book or article on the latest theories in particle physics...