SAROS

TileHead’s Word of the Day for 28 September 2011

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SAROS  (n. pl. -ES)

Definition(s):

1. (n.) the eclipse cycle of the sun and moon, i.e. a cycle of approximately 18 years and 11 days in which solar and lunar eclipses occur in approximately the same sequence and intervals as in the previous such cycle

Useful information for game players:

• Front hooks: (none)
• Back hooks: (none)
• Anagrams: SOARS, SORAS
• Longer extensions: -ES
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: (none)

Epilogue:
There is a lot more to this word than meets the eye (or the telescope), and the tale spans more than 4000 years of history.

Ancient Sumerian and Babylonian astronomers adopted a SEXAGESIMAL, or a base 60, numerical system that proved useful for dealing with a variety of natural phenomena and with large numbers.  Vestiges of this system survive today, in the way that we measure time (60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, etc.) and angles (6 x 60, or 360, degrees in circle).  In the Babylonian system, a ner was ten sixties (or 600), a sar was sixty sixties (or 3600), and so on.  Thus a sar, which passed through the Akkadian and Greek languages to become the English word SAROS, is believed to have originally referred to a period of 3600 years and may have been used in reference to a great cycle of years measured in multiples of 3600.

Fast forward a little more than a sar after its use in ancient Mesopotamia, to the late 1600s, and we find the astronomer Edmond Halley (of Halley’s comet fame) adopting the word SAROS as the term for the recurring eclipse cycle of the sun and moon — which has nothing to do with the number 3600, as the cycle is a period of just over 18 years (or a little more than 6585 days).  How did this ancient and elegant mathematical term get so mangled?  It turns out that Halley had relied on information in an 11th century encyclopedia, which had misrepresented the meaning of the original word.  The error was eventually discovered, but the term SAROS had already taken hold and is indeed still used by modern day astronomers. 

I find all of this bumbling to be rather touching: the facts may have gotten a little mixed up along the way, but through it all the little word SAROS has endured and connected the ages, neatly symbolizing how humankind’s search for meaning in the stars, as well as in the language, is as alive in the modern physicist’s satellites and computer files as it was in Halley’s telescopes and logs and, indeed, as it once was in the ancient Babylonian’s water clocks and cuneiform tablets.

This week’s theme: Suprisingly interesting words starting with the letter S

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