esseff44 wrote:
Foggy,
hope your cataract procedures go smoothly. A lot of people no longer need glasses to read afterward.
As for being named after cats......not really. All those words come from the Greek prefix 'kata-' which means 'down.' Oddly, 'cataract' originally meant 'waterfall' but during it Latin phase came to mean 'gate' or 'obstruction.'
Here's a useful 'kate-' word:
Quote:
catachresis Look up catachresis at Dictionary.com
1580s, from L. catachresis, from Gk. katakhresis "misuse" (of a word), from katakhresthai "to misuse," from kata- "down" (here with a sense of "perversion") + khresthai "to use" (see hortatory). Related: Catachrestic.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?all ... hmode=noneI had cataract surgery two years ago. My friends all said that it was a piece of cake, but I didn't quite believe them since I've had a number of surgeries over the years and they always seem to be worse than I expected. This time my friends were right. I got a light sedative that basically relaxed me. It seemed that the surgery was done in a flash. The one thing they either didn't tell me about (or I simply forgot it) was that in 50% of folks who have cataracts removed develop a film-like covering on the back of the lens. It's removed with a few laser bursts. It took me a long time to realize that this film developed in my left eye because when the cedar trees do their thing, I'm continually putting in eye drops to get rid of the film substances that develops in my eyes when they are exposed to ceder. It wasn't until I had my annual eye exam that I found out the it wasn't allergies that was causing the film.
In both the cataract surgery and the removeal of the film, I was back to normal (OK, at least normal for me

) the next day.
Esseff, thanks for sharing the derivation of the "cat" in the words Foggy mentioned. I recall that the "cat" was related to something other than a feline, but I couldn't remember what it was. I love learning how words develop -- and change over time.