EDITED: Nectar/drink = mead? Ambrosia/food = ?/manna?

  • Mothra
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    11 days ago

    I didn’t hear about Greek gods consuming amber, only ambrosia and nectar. Translation/language issue perhaps? There is no explanation for what thing ambrosia is as far as I know. I’ve always imagined it as something that looks like crystalline pumpkin preserve or something, possibly because the word ambrosia does remind me a lot of amber though.

    • Lvxferre
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      11 days ago

      the word ambrosia does remind me a lot of amber though.

      It’s coincidental - the word “amber” backtracks to Middle Persian 'nbl (anbal) getting borrowed into Arabic as عَنْبَر (ʕanbar), then finding its Mediaeval Latin as ambar, then Middle French as ambre, then English. Initially it referred only to ambergris (the whale stuff, aka “grey amber”), but eventually people started using the word to refer to the resinous tree substance (“yellow amber”) too.

      • Mothra
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        11 days ago

        Yeah but it doesn’t share its root with ambrosia.

        The concept of an immortality drink is attested in at least two ancient Indo-European languages: Greek and Sanskrit. The Greek ἀμβροσία (ambrosia) is semantically linked to the Sanskrit अमृत (amṛta) as both words denote a drink or food that gods use to achieve immortality. The two words appear to be derived from the same Indo-European form *ṇ-mṛ-tós, “un-dying”[20] (n-: negative prefix from which the prefix a- in both Greek and Sanskrit are derived; mṛ: zero grade of *mer-, “to die”; and -to-: adjectival suffix). A semantically similar etymology exists for nectar, the beverage of the gods (Greek: νέκταρ néktar) presumed to be a compound of the PIE roots *nek-, “death”, and -*tar, “overcoming”.

          • Mothra
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            11 days ago

            Yeah sorry I noticed too late that you weren’t suggesting they did. Some days I’ll argue even the date, I need to touch more grass.

            • Lvxferre
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              11 days ago

              No worries! This sort of stuff happens. (Blame Godzilla!)

              Plus you added a lot of info to the discussion.