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Comment by linhns | Hacker News Reader

Epicentre very deep underground, so shouldn’t be dangerous aside from small tsunamis.

Your comment prompted me to go read about epicenters and I learned something new. The hypocenter of an earthquake is apparently the point of origin of the earthquake and the epicenter is the point on the earth's surface directly above the hypocenter. Had never heard of a hypocenter before.

I didn't know about hypocenter before too but it's neat how you can sometimes deduce the meaning of a word from its parts (because "hypo" means "under"/"below" in Greek, like in hypodermic, hypoglycaemia, etc).

The class wasn't as interesting as I'd hoped, in part because it seemed to attract older kids hoping for an easy grade, but in my high school we had an etymology class.

(My school also offered Latin, but etymology seemed a much more direct/easier way to get the same basics. I just wish someone had taught me about demographics so I would have taken Spanish instead of German.)

But how much did they teach you about insects?

Basically every language works that way? You can say underquake in English if you like, doesn't have to be Greek. In fact, it might make sense to pick a widely understood language rather than one with ~13 million speakers

"Hypocenter", like "epicenter", is English, not Greek. These words, like many words in English today, are made of Greek components, which is why kids are taught in grade school English class about Latin and Greek roots.

No, not every language works this way, because not every language uses Latin and Greek root-words like this.

Ah yeah because everyone in England says hypo the sofa instead of under the sofa. Definitely not Greek

> not every language uses Latin and Greek root-words like this

I was responding to the text above where the person was amazed you can build/recognise a new word from parts. Idk who made the statement you're negating

Interestingly, I learned the word hypocenter in Japan as well, in a much more sobering way. The atom bomb that hit Hiroshima exploded above the ground, and the building directly under that, where the blast would have hit first, is called the hypocenter.

Gojira kimasu.

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