Word of the Week: March 12, 2001
The Socratic Torpedo

In Plato's dialogue Meno, the character Meno compares Socrates to a torpedo fish, which stings and leaves its victim numb, because Socrates infects anyone he touches with confusion. (You might know the torpedo fish as a numbfish or an electric ray.) It might be said that Socrates turns his listeners into numskulls with his mindnumbingly nimble argument. The Latin word for numbfish is torpedo.

When Robert Fulton invented in the early 1800s a floating bomb that exploded on contact, he thought it was like the torpedo fish, so he called it a "torpedo." It might be like an etymological torpedo when you learn that etymologically the words number, nomad, numb, nimble, and binomial are all akin.

Words of the Week are written by Dr. Jacques A. Bailly.