I’m reading Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club, and I have to admit, it’s challenging my vocabulary. Tonight I read about Thorstein Veblen, an early sociologist whose disdain for the consumer culture was matched only by his disregard for the sanctity of marriage. (“He had the custom of sleeping with his colleagues’ wives, who are reported to have found him irresistible.”) By the looks of his Wikipedia page, Veblen was not an attractive man, so I wonder, was it his iconoclasm or his Asimovian name that won over the women?
In any case, Menand writes that on the subject of social Darwinism, Veblen “thought that by reading Darwin in the light of classical economic theory, [Herbert] Spencer and his American epigones had missed the point.” That word, epigone, stopped me in my tracks. I’m familiar with the prefix epi, meaning “outer” (I think), as in epidermis. The suffix gone I found unfamiliar, but it made me think of Antigone, the play by Sophocles. Does epigone have anything to do with the Greek heroine? Why did Menand choose this particular word instead of a more familiar synonym?
My staple resource, Merriam-Webster, again reveals my ignorance: epi means not just outer but also upon, besides, attached to, over, and after. In other words, if you see a word starting with epi, don’t be too sure what it means. As for the suffix, Wikipedia suggests that in the case of Antigone, it may mean corner, as in polygon, or relate to genesis, as in cosmogony. That is, Antigone was not just stubborn (anti-corner) but also opposed to motherhood — odd for the offspring of Oedipus, but whatever.
Etymology alone can’t decode epigone, so I shall turn to the dictionary. According to M-W, epigone means follower or disciple or “inferior imitator.” In this case, the prefix means after and the suffix takes on the latter meaning, genesis or seed. Disciples are born after their masters.
I suspect that Menand chose “epigone” instead of the more familiar “follower” because of the negative edge of the third definition, “inferior imitator.” (Dictionary.com is more blunt: the only definition is “undistinguished imitator.”) Veblen does not seem to have been a polite man, and while he could have stomached one social Darwinist, a coterie of misguided followers would have made him want to vomit. I bet he wouldn’t even have slept with their wives.
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