{"id":1024,"date":"2019-11-01T07:45:14","date_gmt":"2019-11-01T11:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=1024"},"modified":"2019-11-01T08:09:31","modified_gmt":"2019-11-01T12:09:31","slug":"metaphor-of-the-month-sisiphean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2019\/11\/01\/metaphor-of-the-month-sisiphean\/","title":{"rendered":"Metaphor of the Month! Sisyphean \/ Sisiphean"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sisyphus<\/a>Poor King\u00a0Sisyphus! Doomed by the gods of ancient Greece to roll a boulder up to the top of a hill, only to have the task fail, again and again, for all eternity.<\/p>\n

Students, in November does finishing the semester seem Sisyphean? Or “Sisiphean,” if you prefer that spelling (both occur and can be considered standard).\u00a0 As WordPress recognizes and the\u00a0OED gives us<\/a> the “y version” I will continue with that one. Just be consistent when you employ the term in writing.<\/p>\n

The lapse in studying Greek mythology disappoints me. I have a dark turn of mind in literature, so I love tales of woe, death, destruction, and crushed pride. They put many a vain schoolboy, even a little Edgar Allan Poe, in his place. Today, Sisyphus’ boulder seems stuck. The last recorded usage of our word by the OED: spelled with “y,”\u00a0 2002; with “i,” 2007. With only three pips of eight on the OED’s usage frequency chart, is preserving our word a Sisyphean task?<\/p>\n

In higher education, no. We are an old curiosity shop of language and a maker-space for new words or repurposed ones such as paradigm<\/a>. So if you wish to be vivid in describing your endless, ever-repeating tasks, tell someone the work is Sisyphean.<\/p>\n

Please send us words and metaphors useful in academic writing by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n

See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Creative Commons image courtesy of Richard Croft.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poor King\u00a0Sisyphus! Doomed by the gods of ancient Greece to roll a boulder up to the top of a hill, only to have the task fail, again and again, for all eternity. Students, in November does finishing the semester seem Sisyphean? Or “Sisiphean,” if you prefer that spelling (both occur and can be considered standard).\u00a0 … Continue reading Metaphor of the Month! Sisyphean \/ Sisiphean<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,40197],"tags":[87401],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-vocabulary","tag-metaphor-of-the-month"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-gw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}