Catadupe
See also: catadupe
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]The place name is from Latin Catadūpa, from Ancient Greek Κατάδουποι (Katádoupoi),[1][2] "commonly derived from καταδουπέω (katadoupéō), as if downroars"[3] (see κατα- (kata-, “down”), δουπέω (doupéō, “to thud”)).[4] (The people are from Latin Catadūpi.[2])
Proper noun
[edit]Catadupe
- (obsolete) A city on the Nile river, a few miles above Aga-nagara; the site of the first cataract of the Nile.
- An inhabitant of this city.
- 1780 [1607], The Miseries Of Inforced Marriage, page 189:
- Catadupes never heard the roaring of the fall of Nilus, because the noiſe was ſo familiar unto them.
- 1819, The Leeds Correspondent:
- The inhabitants of Atures and Maypures, whatever the missionaries may have asserted in their works, are not more struck with deafness by the noise of the great cataracts, than the Catadupes of the Nile.
Usage notes
[edit]- This obsolete name is of note primarily because of stories repeated over the years that the inhabitants of the area either went deaf from the noise of the cataracts (as Cicero and Herodotus[4] and the 1819 Leeds Correspondent above claim) or tuned it out (as the 1607/1780 quote above claims).
References
[edit]- ^ “Catadupe”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 James A. H. Murray et al., editors (1884–1928), “Catadupe”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), London: Clarendon Press, →OCLC.
- ^ Middle Liddell
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Georgia L. Irby (2021 May 20) Conceptions of the Watery World in Greco-Roman Antiquity, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 75: “The Greek toponym Κατάδουποι (katadoupoi : “thunderers”) evokes the deep din of the rushing water. In Cicero, following Herodotus, the rushing water at Catadupa is so loud that the inhabitants are deaf (Republic 6.11).”