I was fixing dinner this evening, when I happened in on my wife watching the tail end of Jeopardy. I walked in on the Final Jeopardy clue, the category of which was "European Place Names," I believe. The clue was saying that this European country's name was formed from the Greek words "one" and "house." Well, being a good (Koine) Greek scholar, I knew that house in Greek is oikos, and one is heis, mia or hen, depending on its gender. (Oikos is masculine, so one would expect heis.) I was racking my brain to try to figure out which country it was, but alas, time ran out. The answer? Monaco. What?
At least all three contestants missed it, too. Alex Trebec mentioned that in Greek, mono was "one," hence Monaco (mono+oikos). Now there's only one problem: Mono- in Greek does not mean "one," it means "only or alone," as in the only one of a certain class (e.g., "only begotten son" in John 3:16 is ho huios ho monogenes). As previously stated, heis refers to the cardinal number. It is true that the mono- prefix in English has come to mean "one" (monocle, monopoly), but I felt that this question was quite misleading and, well, wrong.
I looked on jeopardy.com for some avenue to inform them about their mistake, but of course they don't want to hear from Joe Sixpack about errors in their show, and I don't blame them.* So what's a frustated, overly educated future Jeopardy hopeful to do? That's right, complain to you.
Hey, at least you learned something. Namely, that I am a big nerd.
*Addendum, 5/1/09: I discovered today that Jeopardy does provide a mechanism for reporting errors on the show. I stand corrected.
