Diabasis

November 15, 2024 @ 8:52 pm · Filed by under Etymology, Language and literature, Language and sports, Language and travel

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Jichang Lulu congratulated me on the completion of my continental diabasis.  Since I didn't know the meaning of that word and couldn't readily find a suitable definition for it online (I was familiar with the Anabasis of Xenophon [c. 430-probably 355 or 354 BC], the title of which means "expedition up from"), I simply had to ask him.  The following is what Lulu said in reply:

The use of the term is probably not classically warranted. I meant diabasis (διάβασις, ‘crossing, traversal, passage…’, literally ‘going through’) as a pun on Xenophon's Anabasis (the ‘march up’, i.e., inland, although most of the book is about the march back down to the coast). 

But classical attestations of diabasis (and the associated verb διαβαίνω, ‘go through’ — the unprefixed verb is cognate with English come) in the physical movement sense are overwhelmingly about crossing a body of water (by boat, across a bridge…), not a continental mass as in your case. Skimming through Logeion corpus searches I see nothing like crossing a continent coast to coast.
 
There are various other meanings for the verb and the noun. Also in modern Greek, where the noun (in the form διάβαση) occurs in all manner of contexts from a pedestrian crossing to a planetary transit.
 
Διαβαίνω also means ‘stand with legs apart’, as in a favourite passage of Lysistrata. L. waits impatiently for women from other cities to join her (to plan a sex strike to force men to stop the Peloponnesian War). Expected arrivals from Salamis and Paralia, she complains, are late. Her friend Calonice responds (v. 59f.):
 
         ἀλλ' ἐκεῖναι γ' οἶδ' ὅτι
ἐπὶ τῶν κελήτων διαβεβήκασ' ὄρθριαι.
 
‘but those I know that since the morning they've been…’ and here's our verb: ‘crossing’ (i.e. sailing over to Athens), or ‘standing astride’, ’on their…’ κέλητες, which could mean ‘light boats’, or ‘mounts’ — literally racehorses, also metaphorically sexual organs.
 
Translators have struggled to render the double pun. Some play with ‘masts’. Others just ignore it. Sommerstein does this:
 
Oh, as for them, they'll have been working on their pinnaces well before daylight.

If you're wondering exactly what my "continental diabasis" was, here is a 2 minute video of me (I begin as a tiny yellow speck in the distance) completing it in Astoria, Oregon, the end point of the Lewis and Clark expedition, having begun the cross-country trek at Atlantic City, New Jersey and followed Route 30 / Lincoln Highway, the first trans-American road, by the side of which I grew up in Osnaburg township, Stark County, Ohio.

 

Selected readings

(mostly a sampling of recent posts)

November 15, 2024 @ 8:52 pm · Filed by under Etymology, Language and literature, Language and sports, Language and travel


4 Comments

  1. martin schwartz said,

    November 16, 2024 @ 6:04 am

    In looking up "katabasis", I see that there is a novel by R.F. Kuang
    by that title: 2 academic rivals at Cambridge go down to hell to rescue the soul of their advisor.

  2. Rodger C said,

    November 16, 2024 @ 11:24 am

    There's also Carl Heinrich's 1929 Orphan of Eternity, or the Katabasis of the Lord Lucifer Satan.

  3. mwarhol said,

    November 16, 2024 @ 3:17 pm

    And there's a story by the science fiction writer Robert Reed called "Katabasis: A Great Ship Novella".

  4. PeterB said,

    November 18, 2024 @ 12:52 pm

    And this explains yet another thing I'd never wondered about before, which is one reason I read LL even though I'm not a linguist.

    In geology "diabase" is usually the material of sills and dikes–that is, formations that cross other formations.

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