Syzygy
What a superb word! The second longest word in the English language to contain no vowels. Yes, before you write to point out that ‘y’ can be substituted for a vowel, I know. It still doesn’t count as a real vowel, though. “But, Tom – what’s the longest?” I hear you cry. That would be telling. If anyone knows, they can post it here. The usual prize is on offer – Mr of Mrs Clever Trousers of the week.
Syzygy comes from Late Latin syzigia, which in turn came from Old Greek σύζυγος or syzygos (syn, meaning “together” and zygon meaning yoke. Therefore it’s literally “yoked together”). The Latin form, from which the English version derives simply means “aligned” or “conjoined”.
Probably the most common use of the word is in astronomy, where it is used to mean any alignment of three celestial bodies. It is particularly used to describe the juxtaposition of the sun the earth and the moon. During a full moon (when the sun is between the earth and the moon) and a new moon (when the moon is between the earth and the sun) the moon can be described in adjective form as syzygial. The quick amongst you will have realised that this can also be the case during eclipses.
In poetry (mainly classical Greek) it can mean a metrical unit of two different feet. Explanation? Sure. Metric refers to the rhythm of a line of poetry and an iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable – for example: compact. This is an iambic foot. A trochee is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one, forming a trochaic foot e.g. inform. Iambic syzygy occurs when there is a mix of iambic and trochaic feet in the same meter. This usually produces a more urgent, lilting rhythm.
Finally – well, except that syzygy is used in medical terms to describe the fusion of protozoa or chromosomes – comes the use of syzygy in mathematics. David Hilbert wrote about his Syzygy Theorem in 1890. I fear that as my maths goes only as far as calculating a bar bill, I’ll leave it to the experts to explain. The following is an excerpt from an eleven-page paper, The Syzygy Problem, published in 1981 by Evans and Griffith:
…one obtains, for regular local rings of equal characteristic, that three generated prime ideals are perfect and that factorial rings of embedding codimension two are complete intersections.
Any questions?
And the answer is…rhythms.
…and the prize “Mr Clever Trousers” goes to James. Oh, did I mention that in order to claim it, the winner has to successfully explain mathematical syzygy theory in 12 words or fewer? No? Silly me.
Dunno about that, but I’m having shed loads of fun mentally aligning three celestial bodies.
Without giving too much away they are all Uma Thurman and it’s a very interesting game of naked Twister.
Ahem.
I’m afraid maths are all Greek to me but I can tell you that σύζυγος means husband or wife in modern Greek. I clarify: (η σύζυγος = wife) + (o σύζυγος = husband) = {οι σύζυγοι}. Come to think of it, there is the word “conjoint” in French. Anyway, who cares… I bet nobody needs explanations on the marriage theorem.
I think the modern version is quite appropriate. ‘Yoked together’ seems somehow appropriate
Tip – all Uma Thurman? I mean, she’s lovely but wouldn’t that be just a tad weird?