callithump

Pronounced: KAH-luh-thump, noun

Notes: I didn’t know this word, but the definition makes sense

---

Yesterday’s word

The word stygian means

• dark or gloomy
• hellish
• unbreakable or completely binding (used when talking about oaths)
• relating to the river Styx

First usage

Our word came into English in the mid-1500s

Background / Comments

I normally run across this word in the phrase “stygian darkness”, so I thought it meant especially black, which kind of fits the first definition above. I think I knew that our word was related to the river Styx in Greek mythology. Our word came from the Latin word Stygius, which came from the Greek word Stygios, which came from Styx (the hateful). The Styx was a river in the underworld over which souls of the dead were ferried by Charon. The reference information says that vows made by this river were considered to binding that even the Greek gods were afraid to break them. Another Greek myth was that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the river Styx to make him invulnerable; however, she held him by his heel, and it didn’t get dipped in the water, so he had that one vulnerable spot (and thus we get the phrase “Achilles heel” to mean a weakness). A very funny child’s misunderstanding of that story reads: “Achilles mother dipped him in the river Stynx and he became intolerable” – that always makes me laugh.