Possum-Hunting Heroes

 In episode 30, the hosts dive deeply into the word hero, exploring its definition, etymology, and historical usage through various reference books and tools.

Key Points:

• Physical Resources:
  The hosts bring out several large, classic reference volumes including:
  1. The Little & Ives Webster Dictionary and Home Reference Library. Complete and Unabridged
  2. American Dictionary of the English Language (1828 Facsimile Edition) Facsimile of 1st Edition
  3. The New Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Every Word of the Bible Indexed, Large Print Edition)
  4. Google Books Ngram Viewer
• You can find some photos of our personal copies on our Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/ihatetalkingpodcast. 
• Definition of Hero:
  From the 1957 dictionary, a hero is defined as a man often worshiped as a demigod, celebrated for warlike exploits, valor, fortitude, endurance, and romantic qualities like strength, beauty, chivalry, and magnanimity. It also includes literary usage as a leading male character.
• 1828 Webster Dictionary:
  The older dictionary defines hero similarly, emphasizing a demigod, a man of distinguished valor or enterprise, and a principal figure in poems or romances (e.g., Achilles, Ulysses). It notes that in pagan mythology, heroes were mortals believed to partake in immortality after death.
• Biblical Concordance:
  The Strong’s Concordance does not list “hero” as a biblical term but includes related names like Herod. The word “demigod” and “demon” do not appear, while “God” has extensive entries. The episode briefly tangents into biblical terms like “Nephilim,” which is cross-referenced as “giants” in the King James Bible.
• Google Books Ngram Viewer:
  This tool shows the usage frequency of the word “hero” in English books from 1500 to 2022. Usage was low early on, rose sharply in the 1700s (peaking around 1778, possibly tied to global conflicts), declined through the early 20th century, then increased again from the late 1990s, peaking around 2017. The recent rise may be influenced by pop culture (e.g., Marvel movies) and recognition of real-life heroes during events like the COVID pandemic.
• Etymology:
  The word “hero” primarily derives from the Greek heros, meaning protector or defender, often referring to mythological figures with divine ancestry or honors. Latin borrowed the term from Greek. There is also a Scottish term with similar meaning related to warriors and champions, linked to Scottish independence history.

Additional Notes:

• The hosts share a personal story about acquiring the large 1957 dictionary for $1 at a bookstore sale.
• They discuss the font and style of the old dictionary, noting its tiny print and archaic typeface.
• The episode includes a brief tangent on related words like “hedgehog” (from the 1828 dictionary) as a bonus.

The hosts then share a personal story about protecting their chickens from a possum. When their dog alerted them to danger, one host bravely confronted the possum tryi

Transcript

I Hate Talking: 0:29

-- Welcome to episode 30 of I Hate -- Talking. Hi everyone. So we have a lot of extra material today on this episode. I know you keep saying that. And it is taking up a lot of room in our studio. Yes, you're really struggling with this. So for those that can't see us, which I guess would be everybody because this is not a video podcast. Currently, yet. Oh no. We have a number of books and additional computer equipment with us this particular episode. We have the complete and unabridged, the Little and Ives Webster dictionary and Home reference library. Which isn't little at all, and is massive. No, it is quite large, and there's actually an interesting story about this particular volume that uh perhaps we'll get into later in this episode. Yeah, we can put photos on Instagram too. If you don't know, we're on Instagram. You can follow us at IHTalkingpodcast, is it a podcast? I you'll find it if you just search, I hate Talking. I believe this is a podcast, so I think it's I hate Talking podcast. I think so. The next volume we have is a reprint of the American Dictionary of the English Language written by Noah Webster from 1828. So it's another Webster book. Yes, so we'll have to look at the year in the larger volume here and see because the one that I'm referencing right now is a first edition facsimile of the actual 1828 publication. Is that our word for the day, finally. It is not and we'll actually arrive at the word of the episode momentarily and uh actually look up that word in all these different volumes that we have. How fun. And then we also have the new Strong's exhaustive concordance of the Bible. Which isn't new, cause I definitely use that all through college. Well, I'm sure there was an original, but apparently this is the new, so we'll have to look again, perhaps at the uh print date and publication history of this particular volume as well. Sounds good. And then lastly, we have an additional laptop today, and that will be used to look at the Google Books Ngram viewer. I don't even know what that is. What is that? Well, stay tuned because we will find out. In just a moment. OK, you can prepare today. I did. All right. So, the word or phrase of the episode is a singular word, hero. OK. We've not done a very good job at exactly sticking to our word or phrase of the episodes over the last few episodes. We have always had a word or phrase of the episode, and we've given a definition, but we have not consistently talked about the etymology of the particular word or phrase. True, OK. So this particular word or phrase comes about because uh we recently heard this word used. In a public address and we're told that we would hear about the etymology, uh, but unfortunately, we only heard the definition and as someone that tries to be very precise and accurate with my words and language, we want to perhaps enlighten some of those people that would actually like to learn about the etymology of the word hero. Yeah, OK, I like that. So we're refocusing, we're shutting down our ADHD and we're focusing on the topic at hand here. Hero, both the definition and the etymology. OK, -- let's do -- it. So let's do it. Oh my goodness, I can't even, OK, I will put these in Instagram. I don't even know where you, where did you keep this book? It is in my personal library in the office. I've never seen this before. I'm sure it's massive. Um, I think we've even talked on the pod about me not having the best eyesight. And I can't read those words. They are so tiny. I would have to get my glasses. Yep, so this particular edition is quite large, uh, we'll have to, like you said, try to take a photo of it and uh publish that and uh maybe add a banana or something for scale. And Uh, this particular volume is a 4th printing that was done in 1958. Uh, the original copyright is from 1957. Wow. So, we can either jump straight to the definition or perhaps you'd like to hear the story behind this particular volume. Yeah, tell me the story first. So when I was a little child, my parents took me to a bookstore that was going out of business and the particular sale was $1 per book for any book. And somewhere in the back of this shop, I located this extremely large volume. And asked the store proprietor if he would honor the $1 sale price and indeed he did, uh, it did cause him to pause and consider whether this book was really going to be relinquished from his possession for one single dollar, but he did honor the sale price. It probably weighed as much as you did back then. It very may well be. Wow. I still do not understand how I've never seen this book before in my life. Where do you have you kept it? It's huge. It is, it is very large. And then I can't even read those words. They're so not only is this book massive, but the writing is so tiny. And it's also in like a pre Times New Roman font as well, so I don't even know what font this is, but it is. Uh, Not very modern, right? Is it just um typewriter? Is that what it is? I don't know. Perhaps some investigation that we can do. All right, so the definition for hero from this particular volume. Reads noun. And it actually does give some of the etymology in the definition here. So it is from the Latin, herom or heros, or even the Greek heros. And it means a man often worshiped as a demigod celebrated by any community, especially among primitive peoples for warlike exploits or credited with the introduction of arts or a person conspicuous for valor, fortitude, and endurance in danger and difficulty and for such romantic qualities as outstanding personal strength and beauty, success in war, chivalry, magnanimity, perfect courtesy. Any person whose character, reputation, exploits, and personality strike the imagination and cause one to regard him as the ideal of manly virtue. Or a leading male character in a literary work or in a narrative. So we've been using the Oxford dictionary for a number of our definitions and even a little bit of the etymology of the particular words or phrases of previous episodes, and that is mainly because in terms of modern usage, the Oxford Dictionary in my opinion, does stick a little bit more closely to a true definition in historic usage of words, whereas the modern day Merriam-Webster's dictionary has been, in my opinion again. co-opted by the modern lexicon and sort of just watered down in the current version of dictionary.com. So that is the reason that we've particularly used the Oxford Dictionary in previous episodes, but I think this definition is much more robust than even things you would find in modern dictionaries just from a few short decades ago. Yeah, I know, I think that's really cool. I think I got hung up on the word demigod. I'm thinking like, is a hero really a demigod? So maybe we can talk about that later. I want to hear what you have next. Well, let's go back further in time to 1828. Now, I am Struggling a little bit because there are words in this particular dictionary that I would not expect and was expecting to get to the HERO, but there's actually quite a few of H E R I -- words -- like that just say one because I can't even think of one off the top of my head. Harrison Oh, of course, obviously. So it actually describes a hedgehog. Ashin is a hedgehog. No, it is the act of when a hedgehog causes their hair to stand out or to bristle. All right, well, there you go. A bonus worth for the episode. Alright, so here we arrive at the word hero in the 1828 facsimile. Which describes the word as a noun. A demigod. So there you go, just the very first definition that's there. It coincides in elements with noble, grand, a champion, and with the words lord or master. Uh, so a little bit on the etymology as well from the Latin heroes and as well the Greek. And actually the Greek is the particular source of the usage around demigod, whereas the Latin is not as much. Uh, so then the particular dictionary gives four different definitions, a man of distinguished valor, intrepidity, or enterprise in danger. As a hero in arms, to a great illustrious, or extraordinary person, as a hero in learning. Three in a poem or romance, the principal personage or the person who has the principal share in the transactions related as Archilles in the Iliad, Ulysses in the Odyssey, and Eneas in Eid, for in pagan mythology, a hero was an illustrious person, mortal indeed, but supposed by the populace to partake of immortality and after his death to be placed among the gods. These are intense definitions. And I think we'd find that actually with a lot of the words that we do. If we went back to these particular sources. Uh, rather than I guess now we've set a precedent, so I guess we'll have to. Make room in our studio for these particular volumes. So the final physical volume that we will consider is the new strong concordants. So I guess as we referenced earlier, we gotta find out why it is new. So the original Strongest Concordants is by Doctor James Strong in 1890. And then the new strong's exhaustive concordant improves upon the original volume, according to the text that I'm reading here. And it also uses an entirely new computer generated typesetting. Oh, so fancy, like AI. No, I think they're just referring to the font. OK. And this came about in 1990, is the copyright date. Though a number of the entries also appeared to be from 1984. OK, there you go. This is not happening. I was about to say, is there any hero in scripture? I feel like maybe not. Well I think there would be, but apparently not actually described with the specific word hero. If you're using the definitions that we've heard for a hero from the other two, then yes, I'm sure that you can cross reference. But the word hero is probably not in the original text. So it appears so, at least according to this exhaustive concordance. So the entries go from Hermanites, which is those inhabitants of Mount Herman, which only has one usage. And it goes then to Herod of the Herodians or Herod the Great. Herod Antipas. Or Herod Agrippa. And then Herodians, Herodias, Herodias, Herodian, Herod's Heron, hers and herself. Does it look up things like demigod or anything? Can you find that in there? Or is that too niche of a word also? So the word demigod does not appear in this particular concordance. OK. Now it is also interesting to note that the word demon, which would be Nearly adjacent to the word demigod does not appear in this concordance either. Huh. OK, this is not gonna be part of the podcast is Nephilim in there. Well, before we jump to Nephilim, then let's look at just the word God which is in this concordance and actually takes up 1234. 5678. 910. 1112, 1314, 15, so basically 15 pages of God, gods in the possessive or God's plural. Is that going back to the Old Testament, cause I know that they often wouldn't use the word Yahweh for God. Like, how soon would God show up? So this does use, I think the English language, I think it actually referred to the King James version. So it does go back to the Old Testament. So it would use God when it would say Yahweh. Correct. So it'll be interesting to see if the word nephilim appears because that would probably not be an English word, and I don't think that is the word that is used in the King James, or is it? I find out. I feel like no, I won't find out. So it does have nephilim. But it has a cross reference, so it does not give the passages that use that word, it just says see giants. Yeah. King James uses the word giants, where the ESV would use the word nephilim. The King James also uses the word God in place of Lord. At least in Genesis. And if you do go to Giants in the Concordance, it does have the Genesis 6 reference there. There you go, OK, well, that was a huge tangent, but Got that figured out. So then our final resource for this particular word or phrase is Google Ngram. And it's not the engram. That's exactly what I was just thinking. Google anygram, that's weird. So the Google Books Ngram viewer is actually a resource provided by Google that takes books written in various languages, obviously we're talking about books in English from all the way back in 1500, all the way through nearly the current day, uh, this particular one appears to go up to 2022 and uh you can look at the usage over time of a variety of words or phrases. So we have plugged in Hero to look at the usage over time, which actually is pretty infrequent in the very beginning years, again, that may just be because there's not a lot of either books within the purview of this particular program or it just really wasn't used that frequently and then it starts to take off around the early 1700s and actually peaks around the year. 1778. Oh, just after the US. Yes, so interesting to note that there may have been some global conflicts going on that uh would have been. Written about quite frequently that would contain heroes. Uh-huh, yeah. And then it steadily declined until 1917, where it sort of hit a new modern day low and then sort of was flat until around the late 1990s and actually increased in usage over the past two decades or so, peaking in the year 2017. Wow, that's crazy. Is it continuing to go up or is it starting to decline again? So it does show a slight Leveling off and actually starting to go down. Over the last. 2 years, 3 years, uh, so you can change the smoothing in here as well. So it seems like it peaked in. And actually 2013 has come down and then actually went back up a little bit over 2021, 2022. Right, that makes sense. So a lot of Marvel movies in the early 2000s, followed by some. Heroes within the medical and. Other communities that perhaps uh. Serve their particular purposes over the course of COVID. Right, that's what I thought of when you said 2021 was, yeah, all the COVID things, all the heroes there. If it's early 2000s or so when it peaked, Would that be because of like 9/11 and all that with like uh um war and the heroes there? Or am I just really read into that? Was it just simply the Marvel movies that got it popular? Yeah, it doesn't look like there's any particular spike around that time. It was just steadily increasing over the last two decades. Cool. So we've talked about the definition and from a variety of sources, so very in depth on this particular episode, uh, but we touched on the etymology, but let's talk a little bit more in depth about the etymology of the word hero as well. So, like we said, it does have usage both in Latin and Greek. The primary one that seems to have more usage is from the Greek, which is the word heros or hero, and it literally means protector or defender, and it does often refer to those Greek mythological characters of divine ancestry or later given divine honors in terms of their heroic ability and or actions. OK, that's where we get the demigods concept from earlier, right? Exactly, they would be either a mythological or legendary figure, often of divine descent or bestowed with some sort of divine power from the gods. And then it also does have Latin roots, uh, according to a lot of the research that's been done, the Latin actually borrowed from the Greek in terms of that particular usage, uh, so that's again why we see most of the usage primarily within the Greek first and then the Latin borrowing that but still had uh some variety of usage within that as well. OK, awesome. And then there's actually some overlap as well with Scottish where there is an old word in Scots for the word hero, which also means warrior, champion or hero, and that often was used in terms of a lot of the wartime heroes and uh particular things that people did with regards to Scottish Independence I've seen if history has like. Ellis of ultimate heroes or, you know what I mean, like, what, who are the heroes, people would say overall. Hercules I'm just getting a lot of like. Spider-Man. No, they're just like Batman. I don't know, I guess. Lancelot. William Wallace. Are you doing your personal heroes or I was looking at what? are considered the ultimate heroes. Well, that is our final thing that we will be talking about is personal heroes because I am yours -- because we have -- I'm, you're my hero. Yes, because we were able to save the chickens from the possum. That's true. Oh no, you don't tell that story? Well, I've been doing a lot of the talking, so I think uh you can share the story and I'll fill in some gaps. OK, you are my hero in very many ways. Uh, but recently, yes, we have a bunch of chickens, and they're very well enclosed and um well taken care of, I believe. They're happy and healthy. And the other night, our dog just started losing his mind. Parking and trying to go crazy, which is not necessarily like him. So you went outside and you saw that there was a possum in the chicken run. The chickens were luckily in their coop already, door closed. He was trying to get in there. So our dog was trying to get them, and then you had to go on the hunt. Or the possum. And um I was very scared. Possums, for some reason, scare me really bad. We've had a couple try to get our chickens. I don't like when you look at them and they, they look like they're smiling at you. I know they're not, but there's like this smirk that seems so condescending or I don't know, I don't like them. I don't like being around them. So I was very thankful that you took care of it, and all I had to do was take care of our dog. And get him in the house, so he didn't um cause disrupt any more of your heroic actions. There you go. So, And it was actually our second encounter with a possum in the chicken run. And who knows if it was the same possum, it very well may have been. Uh, we did give that particular possum that we first encountered a out, basically, uh, let him go on his way once we cleared him from the chicken area and got him outside of the fence and, uh, onto his way into the forest. And this particular second incursion was met with more force just because he had one chance, um, again, maybe not the same possum, but. Uh, they had their chance and this time, uh, we were going to protect our chickens. -- Possums -- as a whole. In the universe had their chance and now we are protecting our chickens is what you're saying. Precisely and personally, I don't know if I have that much of a problem with possums, uh, and that's probably why we gave the first possum the benefit of the doubt, uh, even though there was, uh, that particular incursion. -- Do you -- agree they smirk at you? They're just happy to see you. No, they're so condescending. They're like, look what I'm doing to your precious pets. But they actually are relatively clean creatures and will help with control of pests like ticks and other unwanted insects and uh they will typically not really Uh, cause too much damage to your plant life or yard, unlike, uh, like armadillos or something which, uh, would fall more in the category of something that I would want to avoid. Rather than a possum. Right, yeah. So, if I have to do one or the other, I definitely would have a possum, cause armadillos carry disease and stuff, potentially, right? Supposedly, but I guess you have to eat them, is what I've heard, but who knows, uh, but did not have to deal with any armadillos in this particular case, so we took care of the possum, dispatched the possum, saved the chickens, and we're the hero of the day. Yeah, you were, and I think the chickens understood cause they knew something was happening cause they were noisier than normal. While you're doing it all. So I think you did save all those little lady chickens and even our roosters and our family. And our one of our sons is desperate. He made you promise to let him go. Awesome hunting with you sometime. The very next day he woke up and he's like, why did dad not send me to go possum hunting? Like, we don't, we don't do this every night. This isn't a hobby. Daddy had to protect the chickens, and he was in on the chicken run. Precisely. So, perhaps next time we'll have. Some additional heroes. Take care of the possums. Much better than me that stood by the door and just watched you. Indeed, so. Before we adjourn, I think we would be remiss if we did not mention one more definition of the word hero, and that is a submarine sandwich, also commonly known as sub hoagie, Italian grinder, wedge, or hero. Why do they call it a hero sandwich? Well, we'll ask the Almighty Google. Uh legend has it that the term hero originated in New York City where Italian immigrants who worked at local delis and sandwich shops would assemble these hefty sandwiches for their customers. The name Hero was said to be inspired by the heroic appetites of the workers who devoured these substantial meals. OK, sure. Sure. There we go. So a bit of a different episode, uh, a lot more time spent on our particular word or phrase of the episode along with a number of references from our different volumes. Uh, but also some anecdotal stories about heroes themselves. Mhm. So, from your friends at IH Talking, until next time, remember, it is only through talking that we begin the journey to understanding.