Rhyparography
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rhyparography.
- The painting of mean or sordid subjects. From greek rhyparos, filthy. Rhyparography, in Smith's DICTIONARY OF GREEK AND ROMAN ANTIQUITIES (1842) is linked with pornography [it distinguishes between 'rhyparography, pornography. and all the lower classes of art']; but sometimes it is synonymous with still-life or genre painting. Saintsbury in his NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE (1896) uses it of descriptive writing: The Lousiad (a perfect triumph of cleverness expended on what the Greeks called rhyparography). Also rhypographic; rhypographer, rhypographist, a painter of mean subjects. Motteux in his translation (1694) of Rabelais speaks of the post of puny raparographer, or riffraff-scribbler of the sect of Pyrricus. Greek rhypos, dirt, filth; but Greek rhyptein, to cleanse. Hence (17th and 18th centuries) rhyyptical, cleansing; a rhyptic, a cleanser.[1]
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