Hey folks, I'm busy 'working' in the library (nothing to do, whatsoever) and I'm doing some reading for my Religion class. Guess what I just ran into? A short section on Gnostic beliefs. The Gnostics believed in two equal but opposite deities - evil on one side and Jehovah or *The Demiurge* on the other. I just ran a cross check through the online Oxford English Dictionary, and got this result:

DEMIURGE- A name for the Maker or Creator of the world, in the Platonic Philosophy; in certain later systems, as the Gnostic, conceived as a being subordinate to the Supreme Being, and sometimes as the author of evil.

For those of you not involved in painfully boring religion classes this semester(sigh...) the Gnostics were a sect of professional doubters. They were once a real challenge to Christianity; they almost took over the Mediterranean region around 200 AD. Since then they've died out, though.

Just thought this all might be of interest. I'm gonna play with the dictionary some more; it's a very useful little monkey.

-- Charles Martin (cmmartin@princeton.edu), October 02, 1998

Answers

And pt. 3 -

from the OED, again, comes:

raisure. = Elevation.

Raisure, as in Reraizure. Raisure is normally a noun.

-- Charles Martin (cmmartin@princeton.edu), October 02, 1998.

those interpretations were great. i too have turned to the old dic for a further understanding of Fon. Man, that Chung has got a firm grip on his english---and he hasn't even lived in America his whole life. Go figure!

-- Owen Black (Ob200bpm@aol.com), October 02, 1998.

Great take on Reraizure. Funny, i always thought of it in the context of erasure, obviously being the noun form of "to erase". This of course makes sense in the episode in reference to what's-his-name, stumpy, uh...Rourty? sp? Other word origin maybe's: Chronophasia: Chrono, meaning time; -phasia, usually referring to a brain disorder that impaires speech, sometimes making it impossible. So, the virus mentioned to could be described as a disorder that makes a description (or understanding) of time impossible (?) Any others?

-- alex (meat_machine@hotmail.com), November 08, 1998.

This was probably a clear miss, but interesting: "scaphandre" (french) means a diving suit or space suit.

I also ran across the word Fonian the other day, and it's meaning is pretty obvious--eternal, everlasting

-- Owen Black (Ob200bpm@aol.com), November 08, 1998.