Improve Your Vocabulary-Today's Lesson: Greek Roots, Part 9

We have worked through the Greek alphabet from alpha, and now here we are at sigma and tau. Those of you who came late to the party can click here to see an earlier installment (chosen at random!) closer to the start. Now strap into your chariots and get ready for some more vocabulary fun and learning with Greek roots!

Learning to improve your vocabulary will help you "see" many new things, in the way we use "see" to mean "understand", but today we are going to learn about the Greek root word actually meaning 'to see', which is scop. You will easily recognize this root in words such as microscope ("see small") and periscope ("see around") and the phrase scope out, meaning "to look". Okay, that one was so easy that I will give you a bonus root, here: the peri from periscope, above, which means "around", doesn't just mean "around" spatially (as you would use a periscope to look around the sea) but also temporally, as in "around the time" (for you Latin fans, the corresponding root is circa, and yes, Latin is coming. You don't think I'm not gonna cash in on the lucrative roots craze, right?), so in the CSI shows when you hear the coroner stating that some injury was inflicted perimortem, that means "around the time of death". This term is used when the coroner cannot be completely sure whether the damage occurred antemortem ("before death") or postmortem ("after death"). An autopsy is also frequently referred to as a "postmortem", short for "postmortem examination".

Here's the thing: those last words had Latin roots, too, for you purists; ante-"before", post-"after", and even mortem - "death". So what's the Greek word for death? Thanatos, seen as the root than and recognized in such words as euthanasia ("good [pleasant] death").

Something (or somebody) you might end up "scoping" post-thanatos (tremble before the awesome power of the segue!) is God, which brings us to our last Greek root of the lesson, the, meaning "god" or "gods". Useful words with this root include theology (study of religion or the system of belief itself), polytheism (a belief system of "many gods"), and theocracy ("rule by god", or more specifically, religion, as in The Islamic Republic of Iran).

And that, Dear Readers, is that for today. There are still some very useful Greek roots coming; in the mean time, go scope out some things and keep learning!