Ever heard that phrase "not one iota..." followed by various things...happiness, difference, etcettera. I Googled "not one iota of" and saw that people ended this phrase with thanks, land, taint, connection, change...pretty much anything, right?"Iota" (Ι, ι) to us pretty much means "one tiny bit." But where did it come from? How about a history lesson!
I was in my Birth of Europe history class and we were discussing Contantine and Christianity. On the subject of the Trinity, there was a quite the "homoousios" versus "homoiousios" debate.
"Homoousios" pretty much means that the Father and the Son are of the same substance while "homoiousios" means that the Father and the Son are of similar substances. My teacher pointed out that the words are almost exactly the same. The only difference is that one little iota in between the two o's in the latter word.
My professor didn't say anything about the common phrase, but I wondered the two words had anything to do with it. I looked it up on wikipedia (the source of all knowledge) and my hunch was confirmed.
From those two very words and that very debate comes the common phrase "not one iota of difference."
♥, TiffanyAnne
In fact, I did not know that. And, I think that's really interesting, so thank you for teaching me something new today :)
ReplyDeleteHmm, cool!
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