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This Friday, July 27 is the largest lunar eclipse of the century. The opportunity to return to the origin of a thousand-year-old word
1h 43. This is the duration of the lunar eclipse that will enter the shadow of the Earth this Friday, July 27. An exceptional phenomenon, already recorded as the longest of the XXI century. The last occurred on July 16, 2000 and lasted 106.4 minutes. As wonderful as lunar, the crossing of the satellite of the blue planet promises to bring back many myths and popular beliefs. Starting with the name of the event. But where does the eclipse come from? Le Figaro returns to his name.
A name that did not fall from the sky. Borrowed from the Greek ekleipsis "action to abandon, desertion, failure", from the verb ekleipein "to default", the word is used first to describe an "abandonment" and a "disappearance" by speaking "omens announcing the disappearance of a king," says Le Bailly. Only in a second sense can we find the word to characterize "a solar eclipse" and "a lunar eclipse". An amazing semantic neighborhood? Not really.
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The peoples of yesterday who did not yet suffer the Physicists preferred to stop at the symbolic scope of the event, indicate the philosophers of Alembert and Jaucourt in the 1st Edition, Volume 5, of their Encyclopedia. Thus the Roman generals used the eclipse to "contain their soldiers, or to encourage them on important occasions," as reported by the historians and thinkers Tacitus, Titus Livius, and Plutarch.
Attested in the dictionary since the year 1150 in the form "eclypse", the word means since then "apparent and temporary disappearance of a star, caused by the interposition of a celestial body is between this star and the light source that 'usually illuminates (true eclipse), either between this star and the eye of the observer,' says Le Trésor de la langue française. But not only.
The eclipse can be used both in the medical field and more particularly in psychology to speak of "eclipse madness", that is to say "mental disorders which disappear completely, then come back during more or less long periods "and in the formula" mental eclipse "is the" momentary loss of control of thought "; but also in linguistics and politics. "Suffering an eclipse" means "temporary decline of prestige, popularity". A definition that owes nothing to the news
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