Cytherean

I just learned of this word today … what a beautiful mellifluous lexeme!

Started Ben Bova’s Venus yesterday during the Father’s Day Leave-Dad-Alone-a-thon, almost 80 pages in, a fifth of the book shot down in flames. I read his Mars about fifteen years ago, and see his other planetary-appellated books on the shelves of my various haunts. While I had some thematic problems with Mars, it was hard science in a more forgiving way than, say, Hal Clement’s work is, so I really, really enjoyed that angle, and am looking forward to more of the same from Venus.

During a lull in the action this afternoon I went to the Wikipedia article on our sister planet. Just for background data, mind you. But my biggest takeaway was –

What is the word for all things Venus?

Venusian?

Yes … sort of. That’s the common-law adjective that we all know and use.

But then there’s the Latinate descriptor for the Morning-slash-Evening Star: Venerean.

Ah! That explains all those Soviet probes, Veneras 1 through 16, all dating from the exciting exploratory years of 1961 to 1983. But there’s something I don’t like about that word, and after a bit of thought, I think it’s its proximity to the adjective venereal. Though the roots are the same if one travels back a lexical millennia, I would kinda feel like showering if I had to use that every time I wrote about the brightest, most brilliant planet in the skies.

Then, I come across … cytherean …

A bird song! A gentle breeze whispering in the ear! A view which causes the heart to break!

Cytherean!

What it really means is beauty. And thus it applies to my auditory, kinesethetic and visual examples, as well as to the silvery orb that follows (or precedes) the Sun in twilight. Cythere is another name for the Greek Goddess of love, Aphrodite, hence an adjective more self-referential than Aphroditish or Aphroditeatic.

Now don’t fall into the same trap as I did. I originally pronounced the word with accent on the second syllable (in my mind; my coworkers would think I’m nuts [well, they’d finally learn the truth] if I blurted out cytherean every ten seconds):

si – THEER – ee – an

But I learn that’s not correct. Consulting dictionary.com, I find out that it’s the third syllable that’s highlighted, so my angelic utterance becomes:

sith – uh – REE – an

Still breathtaking, but … I like my pronunciation better.

Since I intend to use this word as frequently as possible (perhaps once a week on this blog and once a paragraph on the Bova book review), please mentally bear with me and throw the accent on the second syllable.

It’s so much more cytherean!