Fever, Fire and Pythons

I speak Greek with people almost everyday at the Cathedral, and lately I have been saying "E Vaia echei pyreto" - Vaia has a fever, which she does, although she is otherwise herself and should be fine. Pyretos, meaning fever, has the root pyr which means fire. In fact, fire is a direct transliteration of pyr (pronounced "peer" with a rolled r) - think pyromania or funeral pyre. Usually when figuring these things out only the consonants matter - you can discard the vowels. P and f are different letters and sounds but are actually very close; the labial p and the labio-dental f sounds are made in the mouth in similar fashion and often are swapped for each other when words move across languages. In Hebrew the sound shifts depending on doubling and other grammatical factors. In Greek we see the p become an f as pyr becomes fire in English. We also see the reverse: the Greek word fythi, meaning snake, is the source of the English word python.

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