sophrosyne
Jun. 2nd, 2021 07:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordsophrosyne (suh-FROS-uh-nee) - n., temperance, moderation, prudence, self-control, self-restraint.
Or as the Wiktionary definition more elaborately puts it, "The Ancient Greek concept of an ideal of excellence of character and soundness of mind, which when combined in one well-balanced individual leads to other qualities, such as temperance, moderation, prudence, and self-control." All of which goes to show that it was adopted from Ancient Greek because there wasn't in English a word that quite encompasses that exact bit of concept-space. Said borrowing, btw, was done by W.H. Auden in 1944, and the Ancient Greek word is an abstract noun form (made by -syne) of sōphrōn, prudent/reasonable, from sōs, whole/sound + phrēn, mind.
---L.
Or as the Wiktionary definition more elaborately puts it, "The Ancient Greek concept of an ideal of excellence of character and soundness of mind, which when combined in one well-balanced individual leads to other qualities, such as temperance, moderation, prudence, and self-control." All of which goes to show that it was adopted from Ancient Greek because there wasn't in English a word that quite encompasses that exact bit of concept-space. Said borrowing, btw, was done by W.H. Auden in 1944, and the Ancient Greek word is an abstract noun form (made by -syne) of sōphrōn, prudent/reasonable, from sōs, whole/sound + phrēn, mind.
---L.
