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[–] 243 points 1 year ago (7 children)
  • [–] 87 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    " 'Waterloo' means a complete and utter defeat. The French Emperor Napoleon lost everything at the Battle of Waterloo."

    "Why did he go there, if the town had such an unlucky name?"

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I have to admit that that's an expression I've only heard in US circles. As an expression in England, it, well, has no meaning. We kicked some guy's arse and lost our best general.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago*

    Funnily I don't think I've heard Waterloo used that often, in French.
    Berezina is more commonly heard as a "complete and utter fuck up of epic proportions". It's the most memorable defeat in the entire retreat from Russia, which itself was a complete disaster.

    Waterloo was more of a swansong, since Napoléon had just come back to power after having abdicated, and he was hoping to prove he still had it. He did not.

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  • [–] 120 points 1 year ago* (11 children)

    Odyssey roughly translates to "The story of Odysseus", so yes, the name existed before Homer's story. The semantic connection of odyssey and a long, dangerous and arduous journey came way after that.

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  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    You could say it was an odyssey for odyssey to get that meaning

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Odyssey no longer feels like a word. Damn you, semantic saturation!

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Wow, I really hate to be this pedantic, but it's semantic satiation. I only remember because I had a similar experience thinking it was "saturation" because it just makes more sense, but apparently we're wrong.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    No need to apologise, this is the kind of thing I hate getting wrong. Satiation. Satiation.
    Hopefully it will stick in the future.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    but before the book no one was named Odysseus ever

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    The Odyssey was part of the Epic Cycle, so Homer likely inherited the figure of Odysseus from those stories. Whether he made up the name or the name Odysseus was already established, we simply do not know. Much has been lost to time, sadly.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Wether or not Homer's writings are part of the Epic Cycle is very much a matter of... strong opinions of historians. There's good reasons to include them (They're about the same thing) and not to (Written later, and not lost, like all the other ones, so it makes the discussions annoying). We only know about most of the epic cycle because people wrote about the poems and made summaries and cliffnotes.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    cliffnotes

    Many people don't realize the original Cliff was a hunter-gather circa 9342 BCE who began taking notes on cave walls, then passed down this practice for millennia before it was adapted to parchment and ultimately became the notes we read today.

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  • [–] 74 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Odysseus was a minor character in the first book before he became the main protagonist of the sequel. So yes, Odysseus was there before the Odyssey.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Ackshually, The Odyssey is said to have been written before The Iliad, making the latter the prequel of the former.

    But since the name Odysseus was in use throughout Greece before the birth of Homer then yes indeed, Odysseus was there before The Odyssey.

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  • [–] 57 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I’m sorry, it’s just hard to relive this… without Jarnathan here.

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  • [–] 38 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    According to Behind the Name Odysseus means "to hate." According to Etymonline an odessey came to mean a journey in 1889, presumably as a reference to Homer's story.

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    I'm gonna write a new book call Travelling Adventurer, and my protagonist is gonna called Traveour Venture.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    John Odyssey from the hit series Odyssey

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    It means Son of Oddie. His dad was Bill Oddie.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    How about Joernathan? He is a dog.

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  • [+] -20 points 1 year ago (19 children)

    I don't understand memes like this that seem to be made by and for people who can't use Google to find basic information

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Of course we can all google information. But it’s more fun to involve other people; especially if we find it funny.

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  • [–] 28 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Because the meme isn't about the actual facts. It's about the joke at the end. Which you clearly missed.

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  • [+] -11 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    The joke only makes sense if you don't have the actual facts or any desire to actually learn the

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    But I do have all the facts. And I find it amusing that someone wrote what appears to be the thoughts of, indeed, someone clueless about the whole thing.
    Which, you would be surprised, happens quite often!
    For instance my kids know Odysseus as Ulysse, in French. And so they have no idea that an "odyssée" is named after the king of Ithaca and his maritime adventures. It's a mild joke about people knowing a word from one source and, seeing it appear somewhere else, assume a different relationship than what actually happened.

    Like if someone discovered that Kleenex is a brand and exclaimed "Wow! I can't believe they can just trademark an everyday word like that!"
    Or, "OMG, I can't believe Microsoft invented words ? Bill Gates is such a genius, OMG! But what did we call them in the past?! 🤯"

    Go ahead try it.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    And I don't understand why people call social media posts "memes"

    There, we both must be fun at parties

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Clearly you haven't used google recently..

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