Exploring the origins of words
Cracking open the etymological notebook
In elementary English we learned about context clues: how to infer the meanings of words new to us through their usage in context. We'd run across a sentence something like:
“Despite his laconic reply, a terse almost-inaudible mumble, everyone could tell he was deeply thoughtful.”
And even though our sixth-grade reading levels had likely never heard laconic, we could infer it meant short, brief, blunt. Over time, if we took reading seriously (I didn't, not til much older), we'd refine this skill and build an ever-larger vocabulary. Reading attentively built the muscle for meanings, and the vocab expansion made future reading easier. A nice little flywheel.
This ability to self-teach through reading was always gratifying. Though I didn't read as a kid as much as one might predict based on my habits of today, I liked knowing words. It felt like having some secret knowledge other kids didn't. My mom says that when I was young, 8 or 9, I'd keep a list of "hard words to learn." I guess I have a thing for words.
But these days I'm more a chaser of etymologies.
Even as young as middle school (not even knowing what the word etymology meant), I liked how if you could pick apart a word's components — roots, prefixes, etc — it was like a decoder ring for figuring out tons of others.
You found out script meant "to write", and you could connect describe, manuscript, scripture, scribble. Discover Cred meant "trust", and you've got credit, credence, credulous, incredible.
Decomposing words let you under the hood, and showed that they aren't always invented from thin air; there's a guiding structure you can study and use to your advantage.
This is one of the reasons I'm such a slow reader. I see words and I can't help but go down the etymological rabbit hole. Word roots and their archaic origins stick in my brain.
So I thought I'd start what might become an occasional series, on interesting linguistic discoveries encountered in everyday reading.
Here are a few I pulled together from my recent notes. Hope you enjoy (and let me know in the comments!)
Saeculum vs. religio
Lately I've been reading a lot of theology and history of religion.
I was watching this interview with historian Tom Holland (author of the fantastic Dominion), and in part he's explaining the origins of the concept of the "secular" vs. the "religious". So I had to dig deeper.
We know the word secular today to mean, roughly, "non-religious." All the things outside of a theological context are the "secular." When we trace back the branches to where the word comes from, we find in Latin saeculum, which in the Roman period meant something like "the span of a human life," "a generation," or "an age." In late antiquity, Augustine of Hippo enters the picture and sharpens the distinction between the saeculum and aeternitas, "the timeless city of God" (eternity).
In the statesman Cicero's interpretation, religio owed its origin to "re-legere": to go over again, to rehearse (legere has to do with "reading into", gives us the likes of lecture and legible).
Augustine also recasts this one with a Christian twist, insisting on an alternate view with a root in ligare, meaning to bind, tie, or unite (think ligament, league, oblige). In his definition, religio signifies a re-tying of humanity to God after sin ruptured the original bond. Religion is the bond that ties the restless soul to the Creator.
It was fascinating to hear where we get these terms and this distinction between the secular and religious domains, but equally interesting is Holland's point about how novel an idea this was, that there could be a clear separation between a "religion" and anything else. Prior to the Middle Ages, there was simply no concept from any culture around the world of a realm divorced from the religious; everyday life was wholly integrated with one's "religion."
Latin and chemistry
From 10th grade chemistry class, I have a vivid memory of learning the Latin origins of element names in the periodic table. Our teacher, Mr. Bailey, said them with a baritone emphasis I can still hear, like he's sitting here speaking to me right now. It's surprising that he went through the effort to explain the source of our seemingly-arcane chemical symbols. Why did we pick such weird letters anyway? Well, he took the time to tell us.
Like many words in Western languages, most are rooted in Latinate origins:
Gold (Au) → Aurum
Silver (Ag) → Argentum.
Lead (Pb) → Plumbum (as in lead pipes, plumbing)
Mercury (Hg) → Hydrargyrum ("water-silver")
One that always had a euphonic ring to it, and stuck particularly in my head was Cuprum (Cu), for copper. For years every time I think copper, whether pennies or indoor pipes (no more lead these days), I remember cuprum.
But I didn't know that the Greeks and Romans themselves got the the name from a place.
When first discovered, they called it aes cyprium: "metal of Cyprus", as in the Mediterranean island that was a principle source of the metal. Over time, it morphed into cuprum, then eventually, copper.
In Annals of the Former World, John McPhee's epic tome on geology, he calls out the connection:
"In the way that the Smartville arc seems to have brought gold to California, Cyprus brought copper to the world. 'Cyprus' means copper. Whether the island is named for the metal or the metal for the island is an etymology lost in time."
I wonder where else we'll find word origins in place names?
That one has a sensible connection, but some words come to us by weird absorption.
Above the clouds
I’ll leave you with a funny one, which I first saw in Mark Forsyth's excellent Etymologicon.
Our word sky comes from the Old Norse ský, which in that language meant "cloud".
Hmm. Somehow a word for the thing in the sky became the word to describe the whole thing?
Forsyth has a funny take on this:
"Our word sky comes from the Viking word for cloud, but in England there's simply no difference between the two concepts, and so the word changed its meaning because of the awful weather."
English is such a great language for its wild diversity. A hodgepodge of 1,000+ years of word assimilation. If you've never seen it, there's a great clip of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges talking about this exact topic: the way in which English holds such a rich collection of options for the writer to express such specific feeling and meaning:
As I find more fun origins, meanings, and histories, I hope to write about them more in future posts.