Here’s your chance to apply them.
Messenger: I cut the bonds that tied your ankles together.
Oedipus: I have had the mark as long as I can remember.
Messenger: That was why you were given the name you bear.
-Oedipus Rex ln1034-6
I think -pus means “foot” (-pod as in gastropod or pseudopod means “foot”). That leaves Oedi-. Little help?
Hey, I took Greek Drama in my freshman year. I’ll give it a shot. 
IIRC, Oedi means “one.” Doesn’t Oedipus have some type of deformity with one foot, leaving him with one good foot?
Keep in mind, college was a looooong time ago …
Swollen foot.
or something thereabouts.
MNM
IICR He was club-footed, which is why his father didn’t want him (in addition to that annoying prophecy), so he tied him to a board and left him to die of exposure soon after birth. Some kind-hearted villiager/serf/peasant/herder(which ever) found him and adopted him after that.
Thanks. One thing: club footed? Could someone describe that for me?
Your foot bends downward and in. It’s usually caused by a misalignment of bones in the foot, and now can be corrected with splints or surgery. Here’s a picture of a baby girl with a club foot.
I thought his feet were deformed because they were nailed when he was a baby left to die…
Ah, thanks.
Other famous club foots: Dudley Moore and Lord Byron
And Joseph Goebbels.
Okay, I pulled out the World Book Enclyclopedia, and it says Laius left his son Oedipus to die on a mountainside because the oracle said the boy would kill him. He pierced Oedipus’ feet with a spike. Polybus found the child, adopted him as his own and named him Oedipus (swell foot) because his feet were swollen from the injury.
Thanks kittenblue, I thought I remember reading that in the text per se.
What a novel name for a child!
Those krazy Greeks…