Myth & LegendGreek → English
Oedipal
/ˈiːdɪpəl/adjective
Relating to a child's unconscious desire for the opposite-sex parent and rivalry with the other.
The Greek roots
οἰδέω
oidéō
to swell
πούς
poús
foot
Literally: “swollen foot”
The story of the word
The name is a scar. The infant's ankles were pinned before he was left on the mountain, and Οἰδίπους means swollen-foot, which is how the shepherds who found him knew what he was. Freud named the complex in 1910 and the adjective reached English in the 1930s. Sophocles was writing something else: his play is a detective story in which the investigator is the criminal, and the horror is discovering what you have already done, not wanting to do it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → German → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
oedemapodiatryoctopustripod
In a sentence
The reviewer called the film Oedipal, which mostly meant the son shouts at his mother.