{"id":12989,"date":"2010-04-24T11:18:30","date_gmt":"2010-04-24T18:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/neology\/2010\/04\/24\/molon-labe.html"},"modified":"2010-04-24T11:18:30","modified_gmt":"2010-04-24T18:18:30","slug":"molon-labe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2010\/04\/24\/molon-labe\/","title":{"rendered":"Molon labe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Just happened across the Greek phrase \"Μολων λαβε<\/a>\" (not sure how to get the accent marks to appear in HTML), often transliterated \"molon labe.\" Apparently it was King Leonidas's response when the Persians demanded the Spartans' weapons: \"Come and take them!\"<\/p>\n

Wikipedia adds:<\/p>\n

\n

It corresponds roughly to the modern equivalent English phrase \"over my dead body,\" \"bring it on\" or, most closely, \"come and get it.\"<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I would not have expected an ancient Greek phrase to appear on a T-shirt at a Tea Party rally, but that's just where I saw this (in a photo). It turns out that American gun-rights advocates have adopted the phrase as a challenge to those they see as trying to take their guns away.<\/p>\n

That Wikipedia page has a bunch of other interesting stuff about the use of the phrase at various historical moments.<\/p>\n

And on a side note, it introduced me to an acronym I'd never encountered before: RKBA. From context, at first I thought it must stand for \"Royal [something] [something] Association,\" but no: it's \"Right to Keep and Bear Arms<\/a>.\"<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just happened across the Greek phrase “Μολων λαβε” (not sure how to get the accent marks to appear in HTML), often transliterated “molon labe.” Apparently it was King Leonidas’s response…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-acronyms","category-new-to-me-words"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12989\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}