Word Of The Week

antipodes

There's a documentary every Friday night on France 3 called Thalassa, le magazine de la mer. It's about two hours long with segments on anything and everything related to the sea. Last year, the show's general theme was coastal France. The crew traveled a section of the coast each week and did stories about the places they visited.

This year, the general theme has been islands both off the coast of France and around the world. Two weeks ago, there was a special edition dedicated to an international group of scientists studying everything about a South Pacific island in an effort to identify and classify as many new species of flora and fauna that they could. My kind of show.

At the beginning of the program, the narrator talked about the antipodes they encountered. I wondered what species that was. Turns out it's homo sapiens ! Les antipodes are people on the opposite side of the globe from where you are. More accurately, l'antipode is the place on the opposite side of the earth from where you are.

It comes to French through Latin from the Greek anti (opposite) and pous or podos (foot).

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