Highest point; summit, peak.

In Greek, *acme* meant a mountain peak, but in English we hardly ever use it in the physical sense. Instead we speak of someone's new job as the acme of her career, or of a certain leap as the acme of classical dance technique. In old Road Runner cartoons, the Acme Company is the provider of every ingenious device imaginable. But the word can't always be taken quite literally as a brand or company name; it's possible, for instance, that something called the Acme Bar & Grill may not be the absolutely highest and best example of a bar and grill. And don't confuse *acme* with *acne,* the skin disorder—even though both actually come from the same word.

A cleansing or purification of the body, emotions, or spirit.

One of the earliest uses of *catharsis* is in Aristotle's *Poetics,* where the philosopher claims that watching a tragedy provides the spectators with a desirable catharsis because of the buildup and release of the emotions of pity and fear. Sigmund Freud borrowed the term as a name for the process of bringing a set of unconscious desires and ideas back into consciousness in order to eliminate their bad effects. Today some people claim it's *cathartic* to merely express your anger or grief, since it “gets it out of your system.” Laxatives are also called cathartic, since they provide a physical catharsis that some people believe to be healthful. But there's no general agreement about any of this, and the notion of catharsis remains a very personal one.

(1) A gigantic statue. (2) A person or thing that resembles such a statue in size or activity or influence.

The original colossi (notice the plural form) were the larger-than-life statues made by the Greeks and Romans. The most famous of these was the Colossus of Rhodes, a statue of the sun god Helios built on the Greek island of Rhodes around 280 B.C. that was over 100 feet tall and took more than 12 years to build. The Statue of Liberty is a modern colossus, enormous and stately, at the entrance to New York Harbor. And someone who has played a *colossal* role in history, such as Winston Churchill, may be called a colossus as well.

Loose material that results from disintegration; debris.

After the first hard freeze of fall, gardens are sadly littered with the detritus of the summer's plants and produce: stalks, leaves, vines, rotted vegetables, and maybe even a hand trowel left behind. As the flooding Mississippi River retreats back to its ordinary course, it leaves detritus behind in its wake, debris gathered from everywhere by the raging waters. The detritus of civilization may include junkyards and abandoned buildings; mental detritus may includes all kinds of useless trivia. Notice how this word is pronounced; for some reason, people often try to accent the first syllable rather than the second.

The general population; the masses.

In Greek, *hoi polloi* means simply “the many.” (Even though *hoi* itself means “the,” in English we almost always say “the hoi polloi.”) It comes originally from the famous Funeral Oration by Pericles, where it was actually used in a positive way. Today it's generally used by people who think of themselves as superior—though it's also sometimes used in Pericles' democratic spirit. By the way, it has no relation to *hoity-toity*, meaning “stuck-up,” which starts with the same sound but has nothing to do with Greek.

(1) Fame and renown that result from an achievement; prestige. (2) Praise.

*Kudos* is an odd word in English. In Greek, *kydos* meant “glory” or “prestige” ; in other words, it wasn't something you could count. But in English *kudos* looks like a plural and is therefore often treated as one. So people now sometimes use the form *kudo,* with *kudos* as its plural.

A disagreeable necessity or obligation; responsibility.

In Latin *onus* means literally a “burden,” like a particularly heavy backpack. But in English an onus is more often a burden of responsibility or blame. In legal language, the *onus probandi* is the “burden of proof,” meaning the big job of assembling enough evidence to prove a person's guilt, since the accused is innocent until proved guilty.

A mark of shame: stain.

In Greek and Latin, a stigma was a mark or brand, especially one that marked a slave, so a stigma marked a person as inferior. When the plural form *stigmata* is used, it usually refers to the nail wounds on Christ's hands and feet, wounds which have sometimes reappeared on the hands or feet of later worshippers such as St. Francis. When *stigma* began to be used in English, it usually meant the kind of mark or stain you can't actually see. So today we hear about the stigma of homelessness, the stigma of overweight, and the stigma of mental illness. People may be so afraid of being *stigmatized* for losing a job that they'll put on their office clothes and drive out their driveways every weekday morning so that the neighbors won't know. ```