Is your vocabulary in shape for the Olympics?

It turns out that the biggest sport at this summer's Games is something called 'athletics.'

Do you know the difference between the "modern" pentathlon and the ordinary plain-vanilla "ancient" one? Can you tell "artistic gymnastics" from "rhythmic gymnastics"? Do you know the four flavors of cycling on display at this year's Olympic Games?

After I decided to look into the vocabulary of the Olympics, my most surprising finding was that "athletics" is itself a sport. Indeed, it's "the largest single sport at the Games," according to the London 2012 website.

Our English athlete traces back to the Greek athletes, a prizefighter, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. It goes back to a Greek verb, athlein, meaning "to contest for a prize."

Athletics was probably formed by analogy with gymnastics, which originates with another Greek verb meaning to exercise or train, or more literally "to train naked."

Athletics, according to London 2012, "is the perfect expression of the Olympic motto 'Citius, Altius, Fortius' ('Faster, Higher, Stronger')." All those events, such as the discus throw and shot put, that we associate with the Olympic Games – 47 of them, with 2,000 athletes competing – collectively add up to a single sport known as "athletics."

These "ics" words for disciplines or branches of study can be tricky. They're generally singular, but can be plural: "Economics is an important subject to study," we might say. But: "The politics of the farm bill are very complex."

The Online Etymology Dictionary notes that "ics," instead of "ic," became the fashion during the 1500s. It appears to have been an instance of trying to get English to follow Greek grammar rules. Subject matters whose names in English were settled before 1500 tend to have singular names: arithmetic, logic.

One of the best-known events of "athletics" is the marathon, which goes back to the first modern Games, in 1896, and was "designed specifically to pay homage to Ancient Greece." But if you think the familiar 26.2 miles measured the road from Marathon to Athens, as I did, you would be wrong.

The first modern marathons were around 25 miles. But at the London Games of 1908 the distance was extended to 26.2 miles so that it finished in front of the Royal Box.

At this year's Olympics, under the supervision of its two mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville, who seem to have escaped from a very trendy plumbing-supply emporium, gymnastics will take two forms. There will be "artistic gymnastics," what most of us probably think of simply as "gymnastics," and "rhythmic gymnastics," a women-only sport combining gymnastics and dance.

The four kinds of cycling are BMX (bicycle motocross), mountain biking, and road and track cycling.

The athlon that shows up in so many Olympic events means "prize." The triathlon, or three-part sport (swim, cycle, run), has a classical name but a 20th-century origin.

This year's Games mark the centennial of the modern pentathlon, or five-part contest (ride, fence, shoot, swim, and run). Plain old pentathlon was the Greeks' term for a contest involving the long jump, javelin, discus, a short foot race called the "stadion," and wrestling. Wrestling is a stand-alone sport today; the other elements of the classical pentathlon are part of the "athletics" of the modern Games, where they are further sliced and diced into the 10-event decathlon for men, and the seven-event heptathlon for women. By the time it's all over, we should all be able to count in Greek.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Is your vocabulary in shape for the Olympics?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Verbal-Energy/2012/0707/Is-your-vocabulary-in-shape-for-the-Olympics
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe