athetize

English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ἄθετος (áthetos, “removed”), from τίθημι (títhēmi, “to put, place”).

Verb

athetize (third-person singular simple present athetizes, present participle athetizing, simple past and past participle athetized)

1. (linguistics, transitive) To reject a passage of text as spurious.
   • 1886, Walter Leaf, The Iliad: Edited with English Notes and Introduction‎^[1], volume 1, London: Macmillan and Co., translation of Ἰλιάς by Homer, page 157, column 2:

     But this is a doubtful compliment to a ship ; the alternative "a first-rate sailor," suits the context better, and so here, "or first-rate build," primarie compacti (Döderl[ein]), avoids the awkward tautology with νεοτευχέες which made Zenod[otos] athetize the line.

   • 1957, Gerald F. Else, chapter 1, in Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument‎^[2], Leiden: E. J. Brill, →LCCN, pages 58–59:

     All of this, of course, flies in the face of μιχτὴν ϱ̔αψῳδίαων. But that phrase is suspicious in its own right. It was bracketed long ago by Tyrwhitt, and the Arabic version translates it strangely if at all. […] In short, there is every reason to athetize μιχτὴν ραψῳδίαων as a note of late origin which has gotten into the text.

Related terms

• thesis