Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Word of the Week

Welcome back this week to another adventure into our vocabulary gymnasium. If you remember the visual cacophony that I described in my endeavors to prepare for moving, then you will most certainly appreciate what a Sisyphean task moving can sometimes be for those of us who tend to accumulate more than our fair share of stuff!

The adjective Sisyphean comes to us from Greek mythology. It appears that old Sisyphus was a cantankerous and devious king who royally angered the Greek gods by his trickery and downright nastiness to his fellow man.

His name means "crafty" in the Greek language. As punishment for his arrogance and misbehavior, Sisyphus was condemned to eternally roll a heavy stone up a hill. If that's not bad enough, whenever Sisyphus would almost reach the top of the hill, the stone would roll back down the hill again and again, so that his labors were eternal and futile.

Sisyphean is used of any task that seems endless and futile ... kind of like sorting through a lifetime of junk crammed into cardboard boxes in preparation for a move! The official worldwidewords.com definition is, "Of or relating to an endless and ineffective task."

How do you pronounce this descriptive little term? Sisyphus is pronounced / Sis - ih - fuhs /

Sisyphean is pronounced / Sis - ih - fee - an /

I hope that you enjoyed this week's word of the week.