Archive for Etymologies

Repost: Eldridge’s Etymology of the Week — School

Posted on September 23, 2008 by

Here’s an old post that I enjoyed and I thought would be a nice way to start the first official week of Autumn….

Today’s word is a word so common we may forget its history; and it seems so obvious, we forget that we are the product of 2500 years of work and refinement-and we’re still working at it. This week’s etymology is school, a place of instruction.

Until very recently, school was reserved only for the wealthy, the particularly precocious, or the physically underdeveloped. You can imagine in a world that depended on back-breaking labor: in the fields, on the battle-field, and in the mines, it would be those with excellent constitutions who were the most prized of all members of any society. Only those with free time had the luxury of avoiding the unending toil that survival entailed.

Therefore, the original meaning of the Greek word skhole (school) was “leisure, spare time.” This was a derived from the prehistoric root, *segh which meant “pause, cut, break.” Of course, what do people do with their spare time, especially without TV or IM or text messaging? They talk of course! And schools were the great houses of talkers. The Ancient Greeks especially liked talking. Their primary form of talking is what is known as the dialectic (related words: dialect, dialogue), a series of questions and answers that eventually became formalized into the discipline we now know as logic: a series of propositions that when rigorously examined holds true. This should be transparent to any of you who have suffered through Geometry (notice the Greek root: Geo “earth”, meter “measurement”) and those exasperating logical proofs. Just imagine if all of your free time was enjoyed in that exacting dialogue… it is no wonder the Greeks inspire both such admiration and exasperation!

The first great school that we recognize was Plato’s Academy. The Academy is a derivation of the original name of the place: Hekademia, which was in honor of the original settler of that plot of land, Hekademos. Talk about a conservative society! Plato spent the rest of his life trying to convince students to attend his school (so he could eat) and arguing against outdated traditions. And so his Academy stayed open for over 900 years, a tradition in its own right. The books of his that we still have are literally his school texts-the rebel became an institution. His most famous pupil, Aristotle, also founded his own school, The Lycaeum, which took to teaching a methodology hostile to Plato’s. I guess he took Plato’s suggestion to “think for yourself” to heart. Unfortunately, we only have Aristotle’s lecture notes.

Scholarship, scholar, scholastic all arrive on the scene with the development of that particularly medieval institution: The University. These universities replaced the older monastic schools and took on an aura of specialization and respectability (depending on your point of view). Whole towns sprang up to service these large and lucrative schools, and roaming bands of teachers and students began to crisscross Europe. Here the infamous debates as to “How many angels could fit on the head of a pin?” or “Can God make a rock so large that even He cannot lift it?” or “Can God win a chess-match if He begins in check-mate?” took shape. The medieval university was the hotbed of argument and counter-argument (clearly from the Greek model)-apparently they had all the free time in the world!

A closing note on the value of investigative and philosophic argument: Some of the fundamental truths of the scientific revolution-which has given birth to so many gadgets that now take up all of our free time-actually were developed during the very non-scientific debates from the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. For example, Peter Lombard (c. 1100-1160), a famous theologian, posed an obscure question as to how grace or charity might be increased in a person; this was then tackled by “The Subtle Doctor,” John Duns Scotus (Scotus = the Irishman) who developed the idea and logic that we can add qualities (Charity + charity = more charity). In 1330 a group of professors from Oxford called “The Calculators” took up the question in a different form and considered speed to be a quality that we could “add” to itself and eventually developed a “mean speed theorem.” This theorem was proven by Nicole Oresme (pronounce or-em) in 1350-without any modern mathematics! Nicole’s proof was very well-publicized. The more famous Galileo cited Oresme’s proof as the fundamental axiom of the “new science” in his 1638 book Two New Sciences. And so an obscure theological discussion became the groundwork for groundbreaking scientific discoveries which have given rise to the modern era!

It just goes to show that perhaps religion and science are not so opposed to each other after all, and that any inquiry, no matter how obscure, can, with free time, diligence, and some creativity bear fruit for all to enjoy. Here’s to school! And now hit the books!

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Eldridge’s Etymology of the week–Sinister (finally!)

Posted on December 18, 2007 by

Well, due to the vicissitudes of fate I have not had the wherewithal to produce an etymological essay each week.  In fact, I have had the poor fortune to fall egregiously behind.  I could sing you a litany of woes, but I am sure that so could many of you.  Such is the nature of life.  Our lot is to find a way to make it work.

So without further ado, this week’s etymology is sinister, strongly suggestive of great harm, menace, or evil: baleful, malign.

Sinister derives from Old French sinister, unfavorable, on the left;  and then from the original Latin word, sinister meaning left (as in the opposite of right).  It may have developed from the Proto-Indo-European *sen, the slower or weaker hand.  So how do we get this strange shift?  Well, as we probably already know, we humans are quite a superstitious bunch.  How many of you check your horoscope, “Just to see what it says”?  Or have a lucky talisman?  Or have a “luck” ritual: dressing in a certain order, etc?  Athletes especially, you’re the worst.

So the Romans, too, were no exception.  They were an amazingly superstitious bunch by our standards.  Omens were everywhere.  Soothsayers, their equivalent of priests, read the entrails of sacrificial animals, the auspices.  Generals and Senators would call forth the soothsayers to give forth prognostications and explanations-much like our Sunday football forecasts.  There were also professional augurers who read and interpreted the flights of birds.  Romans were especially fond of birds-particularly birds of prey: their army standard was a golden eagle (carried atop a very tall staff).  When an army prepared for battle, the omens were read: a bird on the right (L. dexter) was good fortune, a bird (perhaps even a crow or cormorant) on the left, the sinistra, presaged ill.

The Romans were no special case, though.  In most ancient cultures, the left was the wicked side.  When the two angels of our natures appear on each shoulder, the good angel always gets the right, and the tempter gets the left.  There is some evidence that when we lie people generally look to the left (and sometimes down).  We shake with our right hands, indicating our mutual goodwill, equality, and that we’re not carrying any concealed weapons.  (Boy Scouts shake with the left, because it is closer to the heart.)

Our language bears the marks of this time honored tradition, as well as our culture, too.  Until very recently left-handed children were forced to write with their right, since the left was wicked and immoral.  If someone cannot dance we say he has “two left feet.”  We fight for our “rights,” not our lefts.  If someone has nimble fingers we say that she has dexterity (from the Latin word for right, dexter) or is adroit, from French droit, right.  On the other hand, if someone is rude and uncouth and callow, we say she is gauche (pronounced GOH-sh), directly from the French word for left.  If one can write with both hands we say he is ambidextrous, or having two right hands (literally, both rights).  In heraldy, if one is born illegitimately (a literal bastard), then his coat of arms would have a bend or bar (from French barre) sinister, meaning a wide stripe that runs from the lower left to the upper right.  The term “bar sinister” in English has become a euphemism for bastard.  So even in a genre where it was supposed to retain its true Latin meaning, sinister takes on sinful overtones.  Spanish has abandoned the word altogether as hopeless and imported a Basque word for left, izquierda-siniestra being too linked with wickedness.

So as you stand up for your rights, remember to include the lonely-lefties, those south-paws of ill-repute, and give them a helping hand.

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Eldridge’s (tardy) Etymology of the Week–Machine

Posted on November 14, 2007 by

Well, I’ve finally gotten this one done. So here it is: Last week’s etymology is machine, a system or device for doing work together with its power source and auxiliary equipment.

It may seem a simple noun, clearly obvious, even to lay folk, but appearances can be deceiving.  Machine finds its way to English shores via the Medieval French machine, “device, contrivance,” which is a descendent of the Latin machina (ma’-kee-na) which covers in good Latin fashion an entire panoply of possibilities: “machine, engine, fabric, frame, device, trick.” The Romans borrowed it from the Greek makhana which is a Doric variant (the people of Sparta spoke Doric, while Athenians spoke Ionian) of mekhane, “device, means.”  Finally we get to its oldest extant root Gk. mekhos “means, expedient, contrivance.”  But it goes further back into pre-history: scholars have reconstructed its likely pre-historic (and therefore pre-writing) root: *maghana “that which enables,” ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) base *magh “to be able to, have power.”

Goodness.  What a history!  And this is only one branch of the *magh root, we’ll take a look at its relatives in moment or two, but let’s catch our breath and take stock of what we have here.  Machine apparently has been a very useful and very used word.  We can understand how fundamental a word it has been since the meaning has shifted so very slightly since practically the dawn of human society (PIE goes back about 5000 years!).

You, no doubt, remember the seven simple machines, all dating from ancient and pre-historic times: inclined plane, wheel and axle, lever, pulley, wedge, and screw.  These all fit the ancient meaning of the root, “expedient, contrivance.”   When ancient peoples started combining many simple machines into more complicated contrivances, we find the word engine, “skill, cleverness” or “war machine,” applied.  It comes from the same root as ingenious: in + gignere (to beget, produce).  The Romans created exceptionally ingenious engines to crush the many and varied enemies.  And here we find an important semantic connection.

Machine’s ultimate root *magh (to be able, to have power) also gives rise a different branch of words: those that deal with magic.  Magic, as well as the English might, also descended from *magh.  Essentially a magos (plural magi) was one who came from a special learned and priestly class who practiced secret and powerful arts.  Clearly they had power, a skill or tekhne (Gk.) -from which we derive our modern word technology.

Natural Philosophy, the ancient and Medieval equivalent to our modern coinage science, was concerned about theoretical problems and practical application.  Natural philosophy’s practical application was called “practical magic.”  Practical magic was learned by a magus who worked extensively with old books and ancient languages would work in the healing arts (physic, leading to our modern word physician), astrological calculation and divination (leading to modern astronomy), alchemy-the notorious “science” of how to turn lead into gold-(leading to modern chemistry), and even, if he dared, into necromancy-the raising of the dead or summoning of demons.  The word science (from L. scientia “knowledge”) itself implies knowledge, both secret (ie., occult) and  overt.  Ancient and Medieval magical and scientific  investigation (these labels are nearly impossible to disentangle until the 20th century) was most interested in determining how an action could be transferred without any physical contact.  The mystery of magnetism held a great power over all the imaginations of the time.  Many natural philosophers (or “scientists”) developed many a machine to plumb its hidden mysteries.

Now of course we know that magic is a sham and that looking for influences of the planets or other hidden mysteries is just silly.  Or do we?  We believe wholeheartedly in gravity, yet no one has ever observe it actually touch us-in fact, scientific observation, for all its endless labor, has never actually detected a single gravity wave, let alone a particle.  The moon drags our tides from one side of the globe to the other.  Light seems to be everywhere at once.  And our voice can be in two places (or more) at once via cell phones.  And we can reproduce tremendous sounds with a simple silver disc (and a handy machine to read it).  We seem to have no problem with these ingenious and magical contrivances.

So once again we see how a word, which seems so simple and plain on the surface, can, with a little digging, prove a rich trove of cultural lore, complicating seemingly simple distinctions such as magic, technology, religion, and science.  Well, until we come to terms with these snags, we will have to content to Rage Against the Machine.

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Eldridge’s Etymology of the Week–Stupid

Posted on October 29, 2007 by

Stupid comes from a Latin root stupidus, “amazed” or “confounded.” It literally meant to be struck senseless (this comes from stupere, stunned; from the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)tupe- “hit,” from base *(s)teu-). And this only seems appropriate from Roman culture that always prized a good fight-those Romans were always spoiling for a new war and a new chance to conquer.

Originally stupid spoke of one’s inability to speak. It is related to astonished (a variant of astonied, literally “turned to stone”). In an oral society to be struck speechless would be catastrophic. Every part of life was communicated through speech: business, war, politics, education, religion. The last would probably be the worst, for in ancient religion, pronouncing the names of the deity was the first step in gaining his/her favor. Without speech, he/she/it would not be too happy. And, amazingly, even reading was out loud. Sustained silent reading was not invented until the 6th century CE with the Benedictine monks who had developed a rule of silence (in order to aid in contemplation)-an amazing innovation!

We still see remnants of the root in the forms of stupefied, e.g., Stupefied silence buoyed in the wake of the professor’s question.. And there is the noun: stupor, a mental haze.

By 1541 stupid is attested as meaning “mentally slow” in English. It gradually replaced the Old English unwis (literally, not wise) and retained its overtones of “stunned by surprise, grief, etc.” well into the 18th century. My guess is that the idea of a (silent) reading public had finally taken hold by then and silence was a sign of decorum and respect, not imbecility. Self-restraint was the core of civility. It became polite to refrain, to defer. What became rude was its opposite: constant chatter.

And so, today stupid generally refers to those who idle away their time with inane conversation, or perhaps just monologue to no audience in particular. We call them “chatty-Cathies” or chismosas now. We have popular clichés: “Silence is golden…” with its handy corollary, “…so shut-up and get rich.” And there are our idioms: to put one’s foot in one’s mouth, as in to say something stupid or grossly inappropriate, usually in reference to a compliment or innocuous comment that sounded of ill intent. Consequently we turn to the proverb: “The silence of a stupid man looks like wisdom.”

And so we see how a word can transition from a physical meaning, to a mental one, and then switch in application and, consequently, in meaning, with changes in cultural context.

As Forrest Gump says: “My mama always told me: Stupid is as stupid does.”*

Postscript: In my ever-engaging Encyclopedia of Stupdity, you can find a lengthy discussion on ‘pataphysics. What is ‘pataphysics, you may ask? Why it is the ever engaging science of imaginary solutions! It was developed by playwright Alfred Jarry who defined it as “the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments.” Just think of the possibilities! Jarry conceived of a decerebration machine, developed Perpetual Motion Food, and computed the surface of God.  ‘Pataphysics purported aim is to “explode” the common belief in what really exists and what does not. (Since when has fantasy been unreal?) ‘Pataphysics must truly be either the most stupid or most brilliant philosophy ever developed.

The Beatles immortalized the “science” in their famous song about the homicidal Maxwell Edison in “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”: “Joan was quizzical / studied ‘pataphysical science in the home.”

* For those that truly DO stupid, we have the wonderful and charming Darwin Awards.  These awards are bestowed upon those who have, for the sake of mankind, unintentionally eliminated their genes from the reproductive pool (i.e., died) through their own magnificent stupidity.  (I use magnificent in its root meaning, magnus “great”.)  Read some of the great moments of past winners and near winners at http://www.darwinawards.com/.  They’re a hoot!

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Eldridge’s Etymology of the Week–Polite

Posted on October 21, 2007 by

It’s universal. It’s obvious. Don’t chew with your mouth open! Tuck your shirt in! Leave the seat down! Everybody knows it. Don’t they? If they don’t, it just makes you want to strangle… um, somebody. This week’s etymology is something that never fails to annoy, one way or another. This weeks etymology is polite, 1) showing good manners toward others, as in behavior, speech, etc.; courteous; civil: a polite reply. 2) refined or cultured: polite society. 3) of a refined or elegant kind: polite learning.

Polite enters English during the Late Middle Ages via the past participle of the Latin verb polire, “to polish.” And being polite is an exhibition of refinement. It is not etymologically related to politics/politic or police, which both come from the Greek word for city, polis. The root for polis, if we peer into the obscuring mists of time, is used to described high fortified places. Hence, the Athenian acropolis (literally, high, fortified town). But things-and especially words-are not always so easy to keep apart.

The Greek word for civilization, politizmos, stands for the restraint that humans exhibit in order to create a stable society-the rules (and they aren’t always laws) that make living together possible. There is also a high degree of ritual in a structured, hierarchical society; and not a scant degree of social control implied in all of this. It is no wonder that police is also etymologically related to politics. So, while the words polite and polis might not be etymologically related, they have been related-and confused-with each other for centuries.

And like politics there is a sense that when we’re being polite we’re wearing a mask, smiling with our mouth while our eyes shoot daggers. Our language clearly associates this two-facedness with close living quarters: polite’s close relative, civil, also implies a sense of self-control, this time just barely observing the forms, that cloaks more sinister desires. Civil, likewise, relates to city-life (and entire branches of law), this time from a Latin root. Civics deals with our public lives, the face we turn to the outside world. Courteous is also from the governmental sphere; this time from the Middle Ages where success at court, that is the King’s entourage, was the path to success. And, of course, today we have strict rules that determine how everyone behaves in a modern-day courtroom. Don’t be found in contempt: you could be sharing a cell with hung-over Lindsey Lohan!

Americans particularly despise the implicit duplicity–the obscuring shine of polished behavior–inherent in “polite society.” It’s in keeping with our character to “call a spade, a spade.” Most likely this comes from our “Frontier Society” ethos, our national belief that if we just shut up and work hard we’ll get along just fine. And there’s a lot to be said for that attitude. Those few nations that we seem to have trouble with-namely France-seem to not agree with this “tough guy” attitude. Our national loathing of the French (even though they helped us win the Revolutionary War and gave us the Statue of Liberty and fried potatoes-okay, those came from Belgium, but the French speaking part) stems from our distrust of formality and smooth, polished words (or shoes, watches, and, even, bald heads).

And so we find ourselves in a paradox: how do we live honestly, faithfully while holding on to those social gestures which make everything run smoothly? Since the middle of the 20th century, we have found many of those structures to be grossly outdated or, even worse, even backwards and discriminatory. But without custom and etiquette we only have our animal, unrestrained natures to fall back upon. In the old days we just shrugged our shoulders and said, “That’s just the way it is.” Now we are burdened with moral choice.

Until we solve our dilemma, why don’t we practice our polsihed-ness? First read up on Emily Post’s Etiquette (by Peggy Post-we have a signed copy!); then memorize these maxims!

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Eldridge’s Etymology of the Week–Personality

Posted on October 14, 2007 by

“Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being. It is an act of courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence, coupled with the greatest possible freedom of self-determination.” [C.G. Jung, 1875-1961]

So this week’s etymology is a word that seems like it should simply be taken at face value. But then again, we should never judge a book by its cover. This week’s etymology is personality, 1) the quality or condition of being a person; 2) the totality of qualities and traits, as of character or behavior, that are peculiar to a specific person.

Personality, personal, persona, person, all come from the same ancient Latin root personalis, which entered English from two sources: around 1225 from the Old French word personne “human being” and from Medieval Latin personalitatem, c. 1380. Previous to this English preferred the ancient mann, a gender-neutral noun that described all humans: as in mankind (OE, mancynn, from cynn “kin”); but, eventually, it became more common to associate it with males. “Woman,” in Old English was wif-mann: apparently your job was all defining.

Tragedy Mask

Person, personality, then, must have represented something different than the ancient mann, if the English adopted it. And this may be buried in the word’s history. Person is really a compound word: per- “through” and sonus “to sound”. It was originally applied to ancient actors who wore masks while on stage (like Shakespeare’s Dramatis Personae). You’ve, no doubt, seen the famous happy mask/sad mask combination that adorns many a thespian’s poster? This is a visual allusion to the ancient theater where actors wore masks (since most of the characters were gods or goddesses or legendary heroes human faces just wouldn’t do), which were equipped with megaphones so they could be heard by the entire amphitheater. So in the Latin we have a sense of a personality hiding what’s beneath. Much different in connotation than the strong and very physical Old English mann!

Tragedy Mask

And in many ways our personality is a mask we wear to the world. Oddly, though, if we pretend long enough and (paradoxically) honestly enough, we begin to take on those very characteristics. “Fake it until you make it” they always say.

And this leads us into the very modern notion that we may have different external and internal faces. Sigmund Freud took up this notion with a hunch that we refuse to recognize our real desires because we learn that they are unacceptable. So, in order to live with others, we submerge them into an area of the mind called the subconscious: those thoughts which might bubble up into the conscious if we would only let them. But never would we recognize the unconscious, which was a mighty reservoir of dark and uncontrollable impulses. This became a controlling impulse of much of 20th century research and engaged such great minds as Abraham Maslow (hierarchy of needs), Erik Erikson (social development), Erich Fromm (character), Karl Jung (collective unconscious), Jean Piaget (cognitive development), Lawrence Kohlberg (moral development).

This self-involved trend has blossomed, so to speak, in the last 25 years, and convinced us of the need to define ourselves. How much energy do we spend defining ourselves! Now coming to terms with who we are takes up entire lifetimes, when, perhaps, we may just be changing masks. Advertisers, always cleverly toying with our hopes and fears, have taken this to the max with “personal” computers (what amazing masks they wear!) that are “customized” with My Documents and My Music and My Favorites. Now there’s MySpace, which is really nospace and nowhere-but it most definitely reveals our ancient habit of being a person: broadcasting through our own ingeniously contrived masks.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

So I’d thought I throw this in. I think Maslow’s right; or, at least, really close.

Where are your needs (not) being met?

Hierarchy of Needs

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Eldridge’s Etymology of the Week–School

Posted on October 10, 2007 by

So I apologize that I have not gotten this out sooner, even the weary teacher needs a rest. And I was working diligently on your grades, which I think are important, too. I hoped you wouldn’t mind.So I won’t leave you in suspense any longer, here is the Tardy Etymology of the Week, with apologies.

Today’s word is a word so common we may forget its history; and it seems so obvious, we forget that we are the product of 2500 years of work and refinement-and we’re still working at it. This week’s etymology is school, a place of instruction.

Until very recently, school was reserved only for the wealthy, the particularly precocious, or the physically underdeveloped. You can imagine in a world that depended on back-breaking labor: in the fields, on the battle-field, and in the mines, it would be those with excellent constitutions who were the most prized of all members of any society. Only those with free time had the luxury of avoiding the unending toil that survival entailed.

Therefore, the original meaning of the Greek word skhole (school) was “leisure, spare time.” This was a derived from the prehistoric root, *segh which meant “pause, cut, break.” Of course, what do people do with their spare time, especially without TV or IM or text messaging? They talk of course! And schools were the great houses of talkers. The Ancient Greeks especially liked talking. Their primary form of talking is what is known as the dialectic (related words: dialect, dialogue), a series of questions and answers that eventually became formalized into the discipline we now know as logic: a series of propositions that when rigorously examined holds true. This should be transparent to any of you who have suffered through Geometry (notice the Greek root: Geo “earth”, meter “measurement”) and those exasperating logical proofs. Just imagine if all of your free time was enjoyed in that exacting dialogue… it is no wonder the Greeks inspire both such admiration and exasperation!

The first great school that we recognize was Plato’s Academy. The Academy is a derivation of the original name of the place: Hekademia, which was in honor of the original settler of that plot of land, Hekademos. Talk about a conservative society! Plato spent the rest of his life trying to convince students to attend his school (so he could eat) and arguing against outdated traditions. And so his Academy stayed open for over 900 years, a tradition in its own right. The books of his that we still have are literally his school texts-the rebel became an institution. His most famous pupil, Aristotle, also founded his own school, The Lycaeum, which took to teaching a methodology hostile to Plato’s. I guess he took Plato’s suggestion to “think for yourself” to heart. Unfortunately, we only have Aristotle’s lecture notes.

Scholarship, scholar, scholastic all arrive on the scene with the development of that particularly medieval institution: The University. These universities replaced the older monastic schools and took on an aura of specialization and respectability (depending on your point of view). Whole towns sprang up to service these large and lucrative schools, and roaming bands of teachers and students began to crisscross Europe. Here the infamous debates as to “How many angels could fit on the head of a pin?” or “Can God make a rock so large that even He cannot lift it?” or “Can God win a chess-match if He begins in check-mate?” took shape. The medieval university was the hotbed of argument and counter-argument (clearly from the Greek model)-apparently they had all the free time in the world!

A closing note on the value of investigative and philosophic argument: Some of the fundamental truths of the scientific revolution-which has given birth to so many gadgets that now take up all of our free time-actually were developed during the very non-scientific debates from the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. For example, Peter Lombard (c. 1100-1160), a famous theologian, posed an obscure question as to how grace or charity might be increased in a person; this was then tackled by “The Subtle Doctor,” John Duns Scotus (Scotus = the Irishman) who developed the idea and logic that we can add qualities (Charity + charity = more charity). In 1330 a group of professors from Oxford called “The Calculators” took up the question in a different form and considered speed to be a quality that we could “add” to itself and eventually developed a “mean speed theorem.” This theorem was proven by Nicole Oresme (pronounce or-em) in 1350-without any modern mathematics! Nicole’s proof was very well-publicized. The more famous Galileo cited Oresme’s proof as the fundamental axiom of the “new science” in his 1638 book Two New Sciences. And so an obscure theological discussion became the groundwork for groundbreaking scientific discoveries which have given rise to the modern era!

It just goes to show that perhaps religion and science are not so opposed to each other after all, and that any inquiry, no matter how obscure, can, with free time, diligence, and some creativity bear fruit for all to enjoy. Here’s to school! And now hit the books!

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Eldridge’s Etymology of the Week–Assassin

Posted on September 28, 2007 by

Alright, now that we’re in to the swing of the school year, let’s move on to one of my favorite etymologies. This week’s etymology comes to us from the Middle Ages-and for a Medievalist like me the best things come from that ever entertaining millennium.

Our word is assassin, one who murders by surprise or one who carries out a secret plot to kill a prominent person.

It comes into English from Medieval Latin (again, if you’re unclear about the difference between Latin and Medieval Latin see last week’s post). It entered into Latin during the 11th-12th centuries from Arabic or Persian. As you may remember from those sketches they try to pass off as history in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, these were the centuries of the Crusades. Difficult and brutal centuries, and the Crusades were difficult and brutal adventures, fleecing Europe of some of its most prized warriors, kings, ne’er-do-wells, poor farmers, and even an entire army of children.

The armies of Christendom encamped in the “Holy Land” were foreigners in every sense of the word. They were totally unprepared for the complex, nearly indecipherable political tumult of the Middle East. They were subjected to (and committed) atrocities, military attacks, night time raids, brigandage, murder, and (yes) terrorism. There is a legend that a sect of fanatical Muslims, intent on protecting their lands from invaders, which the Crusaders were most assuredly were, would use hashish to enter into ecstatic, mystical states. Members of this sect would, at night, enter Crusader camps, murdering their enemies. From the term hashishim “takers of hashish”, then, the Latin speaking Crusaders created the word assassin as the noun and assassinare as the verb to assassinate, or murder in secret.

But this explanation seems a little too perfect. I mean what a better way to smear your enemies with an awful crime: secret killing was considered a crime punishable by death, whereas open, public killing was considered not exactly lawful, but not as great a crime, and marginalize them as users of mind-altering drugs, robbing them of rationality and moral purpose. This description also flies in the face of reason: who would believe that drug-crazed religious fanatics would have the skill, patience, and training to infiltrate guarded camps, execute soldiers, and escape? There’s nothing better than being labeled by your enemies!

An alternative origin seems to hold a little better chance of being correct. A fringe and unhappy faction of Muslims, the Nizaris-who spoke Persian, not Arabic-gained a leader in al-Hassan ibn-al-Sabbah (Hassan son of Sabbah), a rising star in the Abbasid Caliph’s service; but his ambition outstripped the Caliph’s desire to reward. This charismatic and austere man left the Caliph’s service and organized and trained the Nizaris, turning them into a deadly and feared enemy. Some stories even claim that he was the terrifying Old Man of the Mountain, since the Nazaris dwelled in the mountainous region south of the Caspian Sea; in 1090 capturing the castle of Alamut. And so his agents-secret, deadly, and possibly everywhere, the ultimate ‘sleeper cell’-were enemies of the Caliphate, the predominant Muslim power, and the Crusading Europeans. Outcasts. They were called the followers of Hassan, or Hassassin. These dreaded executioners appeared in public as anyone else, lurked in every shadow with scabard drawn, struck with awesome precision.

Later, their enemies, who were legion, conflated both terms, thereby forever tagging them with an evil that the strict Hassan would probably have never admitted. This story of hashish use was repeated by Marco Polo in his Travels (c. 1273). By this time the term hashishim had become a general term of abuse-which we find evidence for in Egyptian Arabic as hashasheen, “noisy or riotous” (c. 1930). By the 16th century assassin had entered into French and Italian and English as “treacherous killer.”

And so the tortured history of ethnography, war, geo-politics, and philology renders up quite an interesting and twisted, secret history-much like the original fanatics themselves.

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Eldridge’s Etymology of the Week–Ambiguous

Posted on September 23, 2007 by

After reviewing your work on etymologies/word origins, I’ve decided I’m beginning a new weekly feature. This feature will highlight a word and its origins, and with any luck it will give us a broader understanding of the language we live within.

So this week’s word is AMBIGUOUS, unclear or vague.

Ambiguous comes from Late Medieval Latin. We have evidence of a form ambiguitatem and ambiguus that was recorded c. 1400 (c. stands for circa, which is Latin for around, about). Medieval Latin is not the Latin we learn in school today. In schools we primarily study Latin from the “Golden Age” of Latin literature which extended roughly from 100 BCE to 200 CE or 100 BC to AD 200*. We consider this “pure” Latin; but you already know that language changes all the time, so any sense of “purity” just happens to be the fashion of the day. We’ve just inherited the prejudices of Renaissance scholars.

Regardless, Latin continued to be used and to be changed throughout the centuries. The Roman Empire eventually disintegrated as a political entity into the smaller states that we associate with Europe. During this process the old regime and its system of schools became defunct. But Roman institutions lived on in the form of the Roman Catholic Church. The church became the institution invested with preserving culture, education, literacy. The church developed an entire body of law called canon law. Many of the innovations of Medieval Latin developed out of the changing fashions of church jurisprudence.

Ambigutatem seems to come from this. It is based on the verb ambigere “to wander around, meander.” The root, agere means “to drive” and ambi- technically means “both,” but in context can be understood to mean “around.” So it literally means to walk around in both directions. Clearly, you can understand the need for clarity in legal proceedings. And the church also had an ancient ritual of consecrating the ground of a newly built church by circling the building while reciting prayers.

Ambiguous remarks are not looked on kindly by lawyers and English teachers, but most of us use ambiguity either for our own defense or for a little fun. Ambiguity occurs when a phrase has two or more possible interpretations: “When I told Pedro that I shot an elephant in my pajamas, he asked how an elephant got into my pajamas” (thank you, Groucho Marx). Now “Ambiguous” adorns many a young skater’s T-shirt and headgear, and when I ask them what does that mean, they give me a querulous look and fittingly respond, “I don’t know.” It always brings a smile to my face.

The first recorded use of “ambiguous” in English was by Sir Thomas Wyatt in 1528. Wyatt, a man of great learning, and not limited artistry captured the ambiguous feelings of a man past his prime in his canonized poem: “The Flee From Me” (just sound out the words, it will make sense):

They Fle From Me

They fle from me, that sometyme did me seke
With naked fote, stalking in my chambre.
I have seen theirn gentill, tame, and meke,
That nowe are wyld, and do not remembre
That sometyme they put theimself in daunger
To take bred at my hand; and nowe they raunge
Besely seking with a continuell chaunge.

Thancked be fortune, it hath ben othrewise
Twenty tymes better; but ons, in speciall,
In thyn arraye, after a pleasaunt gyse,
When her lose gowne from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her armes long and small,
Therewith all swetely did me kysse,
And softely saide: “Dere hert, howe like you this?”

It was no dreme: I lay brode waking.
But all is torned, thorough my gentilnes,
Into a straunge fasshion of forsaking;
And I have leve to goo of her goodness,
And she also to use new fangilnes:
But syns that I so kyndely am served,
I would fain knowe what she hath deserved.

If you would like a little analysis of Wyatt’s language go here: http://www.geocities.com/yskretz/wyattlevay.html.

* CE stands for Common Era, BCE for Before the Common Era. They are non-religious way of referring to the more familiar BC, Before Christ and AD, Anno Domini, that we associate with the calendars of the West.

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