Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbam here. One of the things I love about
Speaker 1: language is that it isn't static. It changes and develops
Speaker 1: all the time as we interact with it and come
Speaker 1: up with personal and communal ways of expressing ourselves. This
Speaker 1: can happen with how we put words together in a sentence,
Speaker 1: but it can also happen with words themselves. Today, let's
Speaker 1: talk about a few words that have changed meanings over time.
Speaker 1: A lot of these have to do with the sort
Speaker 1: of game of telephone we unwittingly play with history through
Speaker 1: our vocabulary. Several words in common use today, like cynic, stoic, hedonist, epicurean, lettie,
Speaker 1: and nimrod, come from legends or philosophies from the past.
Speaker 1: Let's start with cynic. Today, the word is used to
Speaker 1: describe someone who thinks people have selfish or unsavory motivations.
Speaker 1: Someone who's cynical tends to look negatively at things and
Speaker 1: be suspicious of what others say and do. The original
Speaker 1: cynics with a capital C were a sect of ancient
Speaker 1: Greek philosophers who got their start around four hundred BCE.
Speaker 1: Cynics strived for virtue and believed the only way to
Speaker 1: achieve it was through self control, asceticism, and poverty. They
Speaker 1: viewed not only luxury, but pleasure itself as bad. The
Speaker 1: name cynic comes from a Greek word for dog, and
Speaker 1: they seemed to have embraced the comparison. They wanted to
Speaker 1: live stripped down, simple lives, a void of the comforts
Speaker 1: and social conventions that they believed led away from virtue.
Speaker 1: Anecdotes tell of cynics foregoing personal belongings and living in
Speaker 1: public spaces, going barefoot even in the snow, and remonstrating
Speaker 1: their fellow citizens for indulging themselves. The term first appeared
Speaker 1: in English in the fifteen hundred CE, with a capital CC,
Speaker 1: referring to the philosophers, but it was soon applied in
Speaker 1: a more general, lowercase sea way to mean someone who
Speaker 1: finds fault in others and is maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: snooty about it, which eventually led to the meaning that
Speaker 1: we apply today of someone who's generally suspicious about people
Speaker 1: or things. You can see the connection, but it's a
Speaker 1: pretty big stretch. Okay, After cynic, though, we have to
Speaker 1: talk about the terms hedonist, epicure, and stoic, which are
Speaker 1: all related. In popular culture today, the word hedonism is
Speaker 1: associated with debauchery. We use hedonistic to refer to someone
Speaker 1: who indulges or over indulges in physically pleasurable activities like eating, drinking,
Speaker 1: or sex. But hedonism started out as another branch or tree,
Speaker 1: or small forest of philosophy in ancient India, China, and Greece.
Speaker 1: The English word hedonism is derived from an ancient Greek
Speaker 1: word for pleasure. It's most basic hedonism is the philosophy
Speaker 1: that the only two things important in life are pleasure
Speaker 1: and pain. Pleasure is intrinsically good and valuable, while pain
Speaker 1: is intrinsically bad and should be avoided. But pleasure can
Speaker 1: mean many different things. A pleasure can be intellectual, like
Speaker 1: reading a good book or listening to a good podcast.
Speaker 1: It can be altruistic, like helping your neighbor. Or it
Speaker 1: can be a physical sensation, anything from the wind blowing
Speaker 1: through your hair to a how cup of tea to
Speaker 1: yeah as sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Some forms
Speaker 1: of hedonist philosophy also make a point to note that
Speaker 1: short term pleasure might not be appropriate if it doesn't
Speaker 1: result in long term pleasure over pain. The Greek philosopher Epicurus,
Speaker 1: who was working around three hundred BC or so, is
Speaker 1: considered one of history's most important hedonists. This doesn't mean
Speaker 1: he was a wild party guy. Epicurus was what's modernly
Speaker 1: called an egoistic hedonist. That is, someone who believes what's
Speaker 1: good for you is whatever you yourself enjoy, not what
Speaker 1: your mom enjoys, or your best friend or the smartest
Speaker 1: person that you know. The Epicurean philosophy is that wild
Speaker 1: life should be based on moral virtue. It's really only
Speaker 1: worthwhile if everyone enjoys their life in their own way.
Speaker 1: Epicureans also believed in moderating all desires, whether for physical
Speaker 1: pleasures like food or intellectual pleasures like politics. If a
Speaker 1: person indulges in a particular pleasure to freely, the thinking goes,
Speaker 1: they run the risk of becoming a servant to that pleasure. So,
Speaker 1: though they didn't go as far as cynics, Epicureans advocated
Speaker 1: for living simply. This is not at all the modern
Speaker 1: meaning of the word epicurean. Today we use the word
Speaker 1: to mean someone with a discerning palate who seeks out
Speaker 1: fine food and drink. It's a synonym for foody though,
Speaker 1: yea all my other podcast is a food podcast and
Speaker 1: I hate that word. But anyway, ironically, today's Epicurean is
Speaker 1: probably not the type of person that Epicurus would have admired.
Speaker 1: All right, So hedonism didn't originally mean debauchery, and Epicureans
Speaker 1: believed in moderation. Where does the word stoic come in today?
Speaker 1: If we say someone is stoic, we mean that they
Speaker 1: approached life in general and hardships in particular, with a
Speaker 1: sense of quiet dignity that they don't show and certainly
Speaker 1: don't talk about their emotions. Stoicism was another ancient Greek
Speaker 1: philosophical movement. It was based in cynicism and was a
Speaker 1: major competitor of Epicureanism around the same time that that
Speaker 1: movement was popular. A Stoics strived for virtue, but believed
Speaker 1: that mastery of physics, logic, and ethics would get you there.
Speaker 1: There was an emphasis on understanding the world around you
Speaker 1: and within you through learning, meditation, mindfulness, and self examination.
Speaker 1: So how did the word become linked with emotionless acceptance?
Speaker 1: Stoicism taught that emotions like fear, envy, or passionate love
Speaker 1: resulted from false judgments, and so a true stoic would
Speaker 1: be immune to them. A virtuous life, a happy life,
Speaker 1: was a life that was free from passion. But let's
Speaker 1: look at a couple more modern examples. Today, we might
Speaker 1: call someone a luddite if they mistrust or dislike modern technology.
Speaker 1: You know, someone who doesn't do text messages, or will
Speaker 1: only read books if they're printed on the pulped fiber
Speaker 1: of dead trees. Again, this is a term with a
Speaker 1: clear connection to its original use, but it's gotten seriously garbled.
Speaker 1: The original Luttites were a group of experienced weavers from Nottinghamshire, England,
Speaker 1: in the early eighteen hundreds. They got a bit hot
Speaker 1: under the collar when companies began replacing them with automated
Speaker 1: looms during the Industrial Revolution. Gathering together, the weavers dubbed
Speaker 1: themselves Luttites, supposedly after a fabled weaving apprentice by the
Speaker 1: name of ned Lud, sometimes referred to as General Lud
Speaker 1: or King Lud, who was said to lead their movement
Speaker 1: from the legendary Sherwood Forest. That etymology might be apocryphal,
Speaker 1: but they had the name. What they didn't have was
Speaker 1: a trade union because those were banned at the time.
Speaker 1: So the Latites fought back against the corporations the only
Speaker 1: way they could by rioting the workers, wrecked automated looms,
Speaker 1: burned mills, and even skirmished with the British Army. The
Speaker 1: government cracked down was brutal, with some twenty five Latites
Speaker 1: tried and executed and another sixty three shipped to Australia.
Speaker 1: But the Lattites weren't anti technology. They were pro protecting
Speaker 1: their jobs and wages. It wasn't until the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: that the term was used to refer to technophobes. Now
Speaker 1: this new definition appears to be here to stay. And finally,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Nimrod. These days, it's used as an insult.
Speaker 1: If you think someone is being a foolish jerk, you
Speaker 1: might say you Nimrod. Nimrod was a person written about
Speaker 1: in the Bible, which doesn't paint him as particularly silly.
Speaker 1: The story goes that Nimrod was a great grandson of
Speaker 1: none other than Noah. A mighty warrior and hunter, he
Speaker 1: founded Babylon, the first great empire after the flood. A
Speaker 1: rebel and a leader, Nimrod is also credited with constructing
Speaker 1: the Tower of Babel, an immense tower with the purpose
Speaker 1: of reaching God and destroying him. This is the origin
Speaker 1: story of humankind's many languages. A legend has it that
Speaker 1: God thwarted the plot by creating multiple languages so that
Speaker 1: Nimrod's followers couldn't understand each other and scattered around the world.
Speaker 1: So how did Nimrod's name come to mean someone slow witted?
Speaker 1: There's no definitive answer, but many people point to Bugs
Speaker 1: Bunny of Looney Tunes during the nineteen forties. The theory
Speaker 1: goes that Bugs was making fun of the hapless hunter
Speaker 1: Elmer Fudd by sarcastically calling him Nimrod of the skilled
Speaker 1: hunter of your and the insult stuck and morphed into
Speaker 1: what it means today. Today's episode is based on the
Speaker 1: article ten historical words that don't mean what you think
Speaker 1: on how Stuffworks dot com, written by Melanie Rinzeki McManus.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with
Speaker 1: HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. The
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