Talk:paraskevodekatriaphobia

RFV discussion: August 2014–July 2015
I don't seem to be able to find attestation (WT:ATTEST) in durably archived attestation sources:.

As a simple solution, paraskevodekatriaphobia should be moved back to paraskavedekatriaphobia, from which it was moved on 29 May 2014‎. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:16, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The only spelling I see in Google Books is paraskevidekatriophobia, which is based on Modern Greek, rather than Ancient Greek. Even that may very well be only mentions. Maybe it should be moved to Appendix:Unattested phobias. Chuck Entz (talk) 12:32, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * For paraskavedekatriaphobia, there are Citations:paraskavedekatriaphobia from permanently recorded media, albeit somewhat mentiony to me. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:59, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * It has no bearing on the rfv, but this term is an etymological train wreck. In Ancient Greek, simply meant preparation, and was probably closer in pronunciation to "paraskewe". In Judaic contexts such as biblical translations it could refer to the day before the Sabbath, when observant Jews would prepare everything so they wouldn't have to work on the Sabbath itself. Since the Sabbath is on Saturday, that makes the term a very restricted synonym for Friday, but probably not a common one outside those contexts. The widespread adoption of Christianity and thus the change to being the general Greek word for Friday approximately coincided with two sound changes: υ between vowels became v, and η became i.
 * That means that "paraskeve" meaning "Friday" would require combining elements from different time periods, while "paraskevi" would mean using Modern Greek in a context which is normally strictly Ancient Greek. User:Pyprilescu tried to avoid the issue by moving to a compromise spelling, not considering that we go by usage rather than by etymological correctness. I suspect that whoever coined the term looked up Friday in a Modern Greek dictionary, and the "paraskeve" was an attempt to normalize the Modern Greek romanization, "paraskevi" to the way Ancient Greek is romanized in scientific terms.
 * At any rate, I think the best course of action is to treat this as an rfv of all the spellings of the term. If any of them passes (paying careful attention to the use/mention distinction), it should be moved to the most common spelling that passes and any other spellings that pass should become alternative spellings. If none of them pass, it should be moved to Appendix:Unattested phobias. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:52, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Is there even a (gentile) Ancient Greek word for Friday? Some calque of, perhaps, e.g. ἡμέρα τῆς Ἀφροδίτης? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:14, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Good point. I shouldn't have talked about commonness without knowing anything about how the ancient Greeks referred to the different days. If I had to guess, I'd say it would be some derivation from . I vaguely recall reading something about the custom of naming days after gods being a later borrowing from a foreign source. Chuck Entz (talk)
 * Pedantic point, but I think the days were named directly after the planets and thus only indirectly after the gods. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:53, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * True. After looking at the article on the Attic calendar and Roman calendar, it occurred to me that there may not have even been a widely-used system of 7-day weeks in Greece until the Romans instituted theirs in the early years of the Roman Empire. The earlier Roman nundinal week was based on an 8-day system, but I see nothing mentioned for Greece except the division of lunar months into thirds. I'm sure the Greeks were well aware of the 7-day systems of the Near East, but I wonder if anyone really used them. The lack of an accepted Ancient Greek name for Friday would certainly explain why a Modern Greek name was used. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:47, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Per the above discussion, I have moved the entry back to the cited spelling paraskavedekatriaphobia, from the uncitable paraskevodekatriaphobia. - -sche (discuss) 06:09, 6 July 2015 (UTC)