The word hypocrisy comes from the Greek ὑπόκρισις (hypokrisis), which means jealous, play-acting, acting out, coward or dissembling.[4] The word hypocrite is from the Greek word ὑποκρίτης (hypokritēs), the agentive noun associated with υποκρίνομαι (hypokrinomai κρίση, judgment »κριτική (kritiki), critics) presumably because the performance of a dramatic text by an actor was to involve a degree of interpretation, or assessment. Alternatively, the word is an amalgam of the Greek prefix hypo-, meaning under, and the verb krinein, meaning to sift or decide. Thus the original meaning implied a deficiency in the ability to sift or decide. This deficiency, as it pertains to ones own beliefs and feelings, informs the words contemporary meaning.[5] Whereas hypokrisis applied to any sort of public performance (including the art of rhetoric), hypokrites was a technical term for a stage actor and was not considered an appropriate role for a public figure. In Athens in the 4th century BC, for example, the great orator Demosthenes ridiculed his rival Aeschines, who had been a successful actor before taking up politics, as a hypocrites whose skill at impersonating characters on stage made him an untrustworthy politician. This negative view of the hypokrites, perhaps combined with the Roman disdain for actors, later shaded into the originally neutral hypokrisis. It is this later sense of hypokrisis as play-acting, i.e., the assumption of a counterfeit persona, that gives the modern word hypocrisy its negative connotation.
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 04:21:07 +0000
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