Astronomy and spaceflight

The fourth entry is o eclipse, a word an English reader already owns, and the picture inside it has nothing to do with darkness. Behind both stands the Greek ekleipsis, an abandonment, built on ekleipein, to leave out or fail to appear, which is ek, out, plus leipein, to leave. What the Greeks named was not a shadow but an absence: the Sun does not go dark, it fails to keep its appointment. Two English words carry that same leipein. « Ellipsis », the mark that shows where words have been left out, comes from elleipsis, a falling short; and through the Latin cousin linquere the family reaches « relinquish » and « delinquent », the one who leaves a duty undone. So o eclipse solar and o eclipse lunar are two ways of not turning up. The figurative English use has quietly turned the picture round, because whoever eclipses a rival is the one everybody is looking at, while the Greek word kept its eye on the body that went missing. Portuguese leaves o eclipse in the sky and builds no such figure on it.