The complicated noun αιδως (aidos) means propriety (from proper), modesty, respect, humility or even shame. It's unclear where this word comes from — or why it's so curiously similar to the adjective αιδιος (aidios), meaning eternal — but the Hellene culture considered it such a big deal that it was venerated as a deity, namely as the goddess Aidos (equivalent to the Roman Pudicitia).

The much contemplated virtue described by our noun was considered a primary mechanism with which people's behavior was regulated toward the socially acceptable. It was supposed to kick in when someone who was clearly superior (in wealth, skills, pulchritude) came to be in the company of the less endowed, and the greater withdrew into discrete quietness in order for the lesser to not feel jealous, overwhelmed or rubbed out.

Boasting of one's own strength and asserting one's dominance accordingly brings about the natural principle of survival of the fittest, but the veneration of Adios stemmed from a desire for the survival of the weakest; the same desire that results in mankind's rise above nature, the building of a synthetic society and ultimately the ελευθερια (eleutheria), or freedom-by-law, that marks such a society and which is the very purpose of the gospel (Galatians 5:1).

This noun is used a mere two times in the New Testament, namely in 1 Timothy 2:9 and Hebrews 12:28 only, and from it derives:

The noun αισχος (aischos) means shame or disgrace (or ugliness or deformity) and appears to stem from the noun αιδως (aidos) discussed above — via an intermediate verb αιδεομαι (aideomai), to be ashamed or to feel shame, which is thus comparable to the Hebrew verb בוש (bosh), from which comes the noun בשת (boshet), shame, and hence names like Mephibosheth and Ish-bosheth.

But where the noun αιδως (aidos) predominately describes the modest sentiments of the fortunate, our noun αισχος (aischos) predominantly describes the sentiments of the unfortunate. The overlap, however, betrays the core meaning of both our words, namely the desire to not be a burden of any sort to one's fellows, and to remove from general review one's deviation from the average (one's abnormalcy).

In our modern world we imagine that deviations from the average are generally applauded, but that's not true (in fact, what we call originality are commonly very modest variations from the well accepted). When researchers program a computer to establish the average of a large amount of human portraits, the result is a face that many find very attractive. Conversely, most people regard deformed or unusual faces as unattractive. This means that humans tend to be attracted to averages. It has been proposed that this mechanism allows an observer to estimate the presence of a deforming disease in someone who should thus be avoided. And although this may be true, much more important is the tendency of complex systems to converge upon a common center, namely the point where elements have the least amount of relative motion and where they least collide: the point of maximum entropy, which is described by the noun ελευθερια (eleutheria) we mentioned above.

Science, likewise, is not a mechanism that lets us stack knowledge upon an ever growing pile, but rather a mechanism that lets us shave off faulty beliefs from the periphery of an ever shrinking window, or rather an ever more focusing lens. That means that words like wisdom, beauty, harmony, love and even Sabbath all describe the same physical process, namely the increase of entropy and the convergence upon a common state of rest, or one-mindedness (Isaiah 40:4, John 17:21-23, Acts 1:14, Romans 15:6, 2 Corinthians 13:11, Ephesians 4:3-6, Philippians 1:27, 1 Peter 3:8). The opposite: foolishness, ugliness, discord and hate, describe departures from this rest.

Our noun αισχος (aischos), shame, is not used in the New Testament, but from it come: