Thursday, 21 May 2009

Are you scared?

In the last few days I've seen UKIP and its members being described as xenophobic and europhobic.

I like languages so here's a bit of education for any journalists or bloggers out there looking for a single word - other than "winning" - to describe UKIP.

Phobia comes from the Greek word phobos which means "fear". Xeno comes from the Greek word xénos which means "stranger" or "foreign". Xenophobia is a compound of xénos and phobos and means a fear of strangers or a fear of foreigners.

Euro comes from the word Europe which, again, is Greek. Europe is a compound of the Greek words eurys and ops , meaning "broad" and "face" respectively. Europhobia would be a fear of broad faces.

So, a question for any UKIP members or supporters (ie. one fifth of the population) reading this - are any of you scared of foreigners, strangers or broad faces?

1 comments:

chrisboote said...

Well, technos is the Greek for Trade/trader, so perhaps we should all start calling ourselves
Eurotechnics - people who trade with Europeans - or Xenotechnics - people who trade with foreigners?

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