Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 October 16

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October 16

possessives

I wonder if there is some meaning when a poet, in ancient rome, used a possessives for their lovers\friends\prostitute. --79.183.124.99 (talk) 15:13, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Do you have an example? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:34, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't know what OP is thinking, but I thought of phrases like "My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;" [1]. Of course that has two possessive words, "My" and "mistress'". SemanticMantis (talk) 17:27, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Many poets such as Catullus called mea Lesbia, - and to some of if his friends - --79.183.124.99 (talk) 17:46, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

You need to provide more detail. Your question is still unclear. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:53, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

See e.g. Catullus_5. It opens with "My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love" - I'm no classicist, but I think in Latin phrases like "My Lesbia", "My love" etc are just using possessive pronouns as a term of endearment, in a similar manner to many English speakers, poets and songwriters. Compare e.g. Oh_My_Darling,_Clementine. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:46, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

That would make sense. The question remains, what is the OP's question? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:34, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

• There's Keeping Up Appearances where Daisy is always referring to "Our Rose" or "Our Hyacinth" when no American would say such a hing. It's obviously a form of endearment. This seems to be some sort of (at least) Midlands idiosyncrasy of English. μηδείς (talk) 20:25, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Common in the North as well. --ColinFine (talk) 08:33, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Question about WW1 and WW2.

Which of the two world wars did more to effect social change in Britain? --Plannerton (talk) 16:01, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Which one killed more Brits? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:08, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I'd say WW2: for several reasons:

1) Britain's existence was threatened, unlike in WW1.

2) Rationing was required until well after WW2, and that puts a spotlight on class differences.

3) The colonial system largely collapsed following WW2.

4) Britain was supplanted as the strongest military power by the US.

5) The emergence of the Soviet Union as a major threat meant cooperation with the rest of Western Europe and the US was essential, thus NATO and the EU was formed. StuRat (talk) 16:14, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

StuRat -- A lot of those are geopolitical changes. On the social level, I think WW1 was more decisive (in Western countries as a whole, not just Britain), since it had the effect of permanently destroying Victorian restrictiveness. Just compare the women's clothing of ten years before the war (1904) with that of ten years after the war (1928) -- the corset was gone, and if a woman had stepped out onto the streets of a city in 1904 wearing a 1928 "flapper" outfit, she might have been arrested. The one-couple "date" did not exist as a recognized and accepted social institution in 1904, but was well established in 1928. World War 2 had many severe economic and geo-political effects, but it was not an unexpected and surprising shock to an apparently smoothly-functioning system the way that World War 1 was, and it did not up-end and transform social mores and ideas of social morality in the same way that World War 1 did. AnonMoos (talk) 16:39, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

And the demolition of Victorianism was not confined to the British. American soldiers came back a lot more worldly-wise and relatively liberated. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:55, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Don't forget that the Second World War completely reshaped Britain's infrastructure. Many parts of many towns were utterly destroyed, particularly the south-east of the country near London and the many airfields that defended the nation. Years of bombings from Germany, especially from V1/V2 rockets completely reshaped the way that most British people lived during that time, every day was a bonus. Rations and colonialism etc are all fascinating but the day-to-day life of the average Brit was changed irreversibly. The good ol' US, while they came in after the cheque arrived, don't have any clue as to the impact of the routine bombing of their livelihood, neighbourhood, etc. Claim "Pearl Harbour" but actually, try living every day of your life for years thinking that you'd be bombed to death... The Rambling Man (talk) 17:16, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)To answer Baseball Bugs's question first: our article World War I casualties says that British deaths in WWI totalled 1,012,075 (highest estimate) including about 124,000 civilians, of whom, 16,829 were killed by direct military action, the remainder were mainly the result of the 1918 flu pandemic. Our World War II casualties article says that British deaths totalled 450,900 including 67,100 civilian deaths by direct military action (chiefly air raids). So the first caused more than double the mortality of the second.

The original question is rather more a matter of conjecture. The World Wars seem to have accelerated existing trends. Thus we have the "Great Unrest", a wave of strikes and industrial action before and even during the First World War [2], but the 1926 General Strike and the Jarrow March after it. The final part of the sequence could be seen as the public appetite for nationalisation in the post WWII period. The Suffragette movement pre WWI translated to universal suffrage in 1928. The provision of state pensions in 1907, followed eventually by the National Health Service after World War II. The writing was arguably already on the wall for the aristocracy before 1914, but decline was certainly accelerated greatly by both wars. Arguably, the biggest impact on the UK as a whole was the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. Alansplodge (talk) 17:19, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

• I am not British, but I think it's clear historically that WWI was a modern turning point of which WWII was just a continuation. In addition to the million casualties, there was the Lost Generation the rise of the Labour Party, Female suffrage and the Irish Republic, the rise of Fascism, Nazism and Russian Communism. Almost all of Tolkien's classmates dies or were destroyed in the war, his depiction of Mordor and the lands surrounding it evoke the trenches and mood of the Western Front. Imagine what was potentially lost with the loss of so many of his generation. Consider the terrible settlement of the first war, the carving up of the Middle East, the legitimate complaints of Germany that it had agreed to a ceasefire, not surrender. The only thing comparable in its effects would be the Seven Years' War through the Napoleonic Wars. We tend to look at WWII and Napoleon as they are more recent, but their causes are just as significant. μηδείς (talk) 17:53, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Apologies to the OP for the fact that unreferenced opinions mostly didn't answer the questions. It's a sad indication that the majority of contributors will just give their "speculative" and "drive-by opinion" (as I did I suppose, in response to some unreferenced nonsense, but having lived in the UK for some time, i.e. all my life...) as opposed to giving encyclopaedic responses with references and links to Wikipedia where possible. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:01, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Is Jane Eyre a Quaker, or is she Quaker-like?

Is Jane Eyre a Quaker, or is she merely like a Quaker but not really a professing Quaker? Could it be that her self-described plain dress is due to her relative poverty than to her religion? By the way, what kind of religion is that Rochester guy? As far as I know, his religion prohibits bigamy. Is he Anglican or Catholic or Anglo-Catholic? 140.254.226.224 (talk) 17:13, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

A great majority of the country gentry in England were (and probably still are) members of the Anglican Church of England for historical and social as well as religious reasons. I'm not sure that the Reverend Rivers, an Anglican clergyman, would have considered a Non-Conformist or (even less likely) a Roman Catholic as a wife either. There were no Anglo-Catholics as such at that time; they were a product of the Oxford Movement a few decades later, however many of the gentry supported the High Church party within the Church of England. Although the term "High Church" is nowadays linked to Anglo-Catholicism, in the early 19th century: "High Church clergy and laity were often termed "high and dry", in reference to their traditional "high" attitude with regard to political position of the Church in England, and "dry" faith, which was accompanied by an austere but decorous mode of worship, as reflective of their idea of an orderly and dignified churchmanship", to quote our article. As far as I can remember, none of this is explained in the book, it is assumed that the readers will understand the nuances of the religious situation of the time, with out the need to have it spelled out. Alansplodge (talk) 20:59, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

There's nothing in the book that says she was a Quaker, as I recall. Her deceased parents' religion is not mentioned, and I don't believe the Reeds' was either (they definitely weren't Quakers in any case). I think Mr. Brocklehurst gave the orphans a weekly religious lecture, but of course Jane despised him, so she wouldn't have paid him any mind. She was poverty-stricken, so she could only afford plain clothing. Her self-perceived unattractiveness and station in life pre-Mr. Rochester would have made this her preference as well. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:00, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Fortunately the text of the novel is available online, and the word "Quaker" (or variant) occurs four times, none of which seem to indicate that Jane herself is a Quaker; they are mostly references to the Quakers' plain style of dress. In Chapter VII Jane describes how they all go to church from Lowood school: "Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season. We had to walk two miles to Brocklebridge Church, where our patron officiated." I think it's safe to assume that this would be an Anglican church. Likewise in Chapter XXVI her wedding to Mr Rochester is described as being at the "church", with no further qualification, so again it would be the local Anglican church. As Alansplodge says, it would be unusual, and worthy of mention, for someone in Mr Rochester's position not to be an Anglican. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 11:44, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Before the Marriage Act 1836, Christian marriages in England were only recognized as valid under English law if they took place in the Church of England. (None of the very limited exceptions -- that Quakers were not counted as Christians, and that sometimes foreigners could get around the restriction by marrying in chapels attached to foreign embassies in London -- would have applied to Jane Eyre.) AnonMoos (talk) 14:20, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Are Jewish converts who happen to be transmen circumcised?

Are Jewish converts who happen to be transmen circumcised, or are they treated as female upon conversion? 140.254.136.149 (talk) 21:20, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I suspect that they'll wait until such a thing ever happens, before anybody needs to decide. A quick look at Google didn't bring any historic examples to light. Alansplodge (talk) 21:41, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

• Assuming they are accepted as men with a medical problem, a pinprick or even no procedure is necessary for a bar mitzvah, see Robinson, previously referenced. μηδείς (talk) 21:08, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I have a wiccan question

Does anyone know anything about a Greek god called Nekros Kidemonas/ Here's listed at this link here:http://wikibin.org/articles/nekros-kidemonas.html Is he associated with the practice of Wicca it self? Venustar84 (talk)

Nekros Kidemonas is a machine translation for "dead guardian," but Nekros Kidemonas has more of the sense "dead people the guardians" rather than "guardian of the dead" (fylakas to̱n nekron) or "(a/the) guardian (that is dead)" (nekro kidemona). A case of Romanes eunt domus.

The only other places I'm seeing it are a few online RPGs.

In other words, completely made up and not a part of Wicca or ancient Greek religion. Not that that won't stop a Chaos magician, but what will? Ian.thomson (talk) 22:14, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Looking further at Wikibin, I trust that site only as far as I can throw something heavy or sharp at that site's owners. They're hijacking our brand to spread misinformation under the guise of "free speech." Ian.thomson (talk) 22:24, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

They aren't hijacking any brand. Wikipedia did not create or invent the term Wiki, it existed long before Wikipedia. --Jayron32 23:12, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I understand the difference between Wiki software and Wikipedia, but they're presenting themselves as a Wiki-based source of knowledge, using a puzzle piece as their logo. They even declare themselves to be "The Recycle Bin of Wikipedia!" Ian.thomson (talk) 23:18, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikibin appears to be a repository of deleted WP articles; see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nekros Kidemonas. I particularly like the note at the bottom of the Wikibin page: "There was more to this document, but the text was unreadable." They forgot to say that the part that they did include was unreadable, too. Deor (talk) 00:16, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

There's also Wiccapedia, which is mostly literally unreadable (at least in this sphere). InedibleHulk (talk) 12:48, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

As Wicca is a practice grounded in the British Isles, it's unlikely a Greek deity would feature in it, and I must say I've never come across this entity in my readings around Wicca. --TammyMoet (talk) 08:28, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Modern Wicca has become a sort of Wikibin of pagan deities, and Greek ones frequently surface. It wouldn't surprise me if Nekros where's the bloody verb? Kidemonas turned up in a wiccan context, one can only be prepared to laugh. Ian Thomson is perfectly correct, and googling "νεκρός κηδεμων" gets no results at all. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 10:33, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, Fiddlersmouth is spot-on. Wicca has demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt and integrate belief systems and now includes ideas of Greek, Roman, Judaic spiritualist, Gnostic, Celtic, Nordic and pre-Germanic origin. St★lwart¹¹¹ 12:26, 21 October 2014 (UTC)