anabasis

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The Word of the Day for June 15 is:

anabasis   \uh-NAB-uh-sis\   noun 
    *1 : a going or marching up : advance; especially : a military advance  
     2 : a difficult and dangerous military retreat 

Example sentence:
     In U.S. history class, we learned about General Sherman's famous anabasis 
through the South.

Did you know?
     The first sense of "anabasis" follows logically enough from its roots. In 
Greek, the word originally meant "inland march"; it is derived from 
"anabainein," meaning "to go up or inland," which is formed by combining the 
prefix "ana-" ("up") and "bainein" ("to go"). The second and opposite sense, 
however, comes from an anabasis gone wrong. In 401 B.C., Greek mercenaries 
fighting for Cyrus the Younger marched into the Persian Empire only to find 
themselves cut off hundreds of miles from home. As a result, they were forced 
to undertake an arduous and embattled retreat across unknown territories. 
Xenophon, a Greek historian who accompanied the mercenaries on the march, wrote 
the epic narrative _Anabasis_ about this experience, and consequently 
"anabasis" came to mean a dramatic retreat as well as an advance.

*Indicates the sense illustrated by the example sentence. 





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