{"id":18274,"date":"2019-09-05T16:42:38","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T16:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=18274"},"modified":"2019-09-05T16:42:38","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T16:42:38","slug":"dilemmas-and-trilemmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=18274","title":{"rendered":"Dilemmas and Trilemmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A dilemma is &#8220;a situation necessitating a choice between two equal, esp. equally undesirable, alternatives&#8221;, or &#8220;a problem that seems incapable of a solution&#8221; [<a href=\"https:\/\/dictionary.reverso.net\/english-definition\/dilemma\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>It comes, via Late Latin, from the Ancient Greek <em>\u03b4\u03af\u03bb\u03b7\u03bc\u03bc\u03b1<\/em> (d\u00edl\u0113mma, &#8211; ambiguous proposition), from <em>\u03b4\u03b9-<\/em> (di-, having two of) and <em>\u03bb\u1fc6\u03bc\u03bc\u03b1<\/em> (l\u00eamma, &#8211; premise, proposition) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/dilemma#English\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Today I spotted the word <strong>trilemma<\/strong> in an <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.spectator.co.uk\/2019\/09\/ivan-rogers-the-realities-of-a-no-deal-brexit\/?fbclid=IwAR0tBs7Lq-FZWQuGVehsfk6Hc6HonGjq_my44p64XLVQENNV-pjZxqtSKAs\">article in The Spectator<\/a>. I hadn&#8217;t seen it before, but from the context it appears to be a variant of <strong>dilemma<\/strong> involving three choices.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/trilemma#English\">Wiktionary<\/a>, a <strong>trilemma<\/strong> is &#8220;A circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options that seem equally undesirable&#8221; or &#8220;put another way, in which a choice must be made among three desirable options, only two of which are possible at the same time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I thought <strong>trilemma<\/strong> was a recently-coined word, but according to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/trilemma#English\">Wikpedia<\/a>, it was first used in writing back in 1672.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A dilemma is &#8220;a situation necessitating a choice between two equal, esp. equally undesirable, alternatives&#8221;, or &#8220;a problem that seems incapable of a solution&#8221; [source]. It comes, via Late Latin, from the Ancient Greek \u03b4\u03af\u03bb\u03b7\u03bc\u03bc\u03b1 (d\u00edl\u0113mma, &#8211; ambiguous proposition), from \u03b4\u03b9- (di-, having two of) and \u03bb\u1fc6\u03bc\u03bc\u03b1 (l\u00eamma, &#8211; premise, proposition) [source]. Today I spotted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,118,10,15,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-greek","category-language","category-latin","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18274"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18278,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18274\/revisions\/18278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}