More Changing Meanings

The first thing I would like to say is that I am not out to offend any of you/your religions (can one offend a religion?). I could care less what your worldview is. Now.

Today I got to sit and listen to a lecture about the life of Socrates. I know this sounds exceptionally boring, but . . . I actually kind of was interested (remember, I’m a nerd). So anyway, we got to talking about how Socrates alleged that he heard a voice that told him not to do certain things. Our teacher called this his daimōn.

I was confused for a moment, because this made me think of dæmon, the Middle English word for “demon.” What I think of as a demon (and what most people do nowadays) is a really bad spirit (from Hell or whatever). This voice of Socrates hardly seemed like such a malevolence–it wasn’t, after all, telling him it was bad to not kill children or anything of that ilk. Why dæmon?

So I looked up the etymology for “demon,” which does, in fact, come from the Middle English dæmon. This, however, comes from the Greek daimōn, which meant “divine power, fate, god”–note that there is no bad connotation. In Latin, on the other hand, dæmon came to mean “a spirit, an evil spirit, a demon.”

Moral of the Story: How can some people hold that morals are unchanging throughout time when words like daimōn can go from being innocent spirits (okay, maybe not completely, if you know anything about Greek mythology, but . . . ) to being malignant spirits? (Again, I’m not trying to offend people!)

Mostly Unknown Meanings

I always love when I’m . . . randomly flipping through the Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories (yes, I am a nerd) . . . and I come across an etymological meaning that makes so much sense but that I never would have connected with the word.

The word of the day is “plagiarism.” The Latin word plagium meant the capturing of animals using a hunting net or snare (called plaga). Kidnappers who took children or freemen and sold them as slaves were called plagiarius. This turned to plagiary (still meaning kidnapper) circa the seventeenth century and picked up its modern usage (the theft of another’s words or ideas) circa the eighteenth century.

Moral of the Story: Stealing someone’s words/ideas is on level with stealing someone’s babies. Don’t do it; stealing babies is generally not an accepted practice.

Prescribing Language

So. It’s National Grammar Day. If you didn’t know about this, check out the site here: http://nationalgrammarday.com/ (Only if you’re interested, of course.)

Now I’ll give you my thoughts on the idea. I love language. I love language more than anything in the world, maybe—probably, actually. Do I think it’s a great thing to celebrate language? Of course. Do I think we need a day to celebrate language? No. Do I think there should be a “Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar”? Absolutely not (if I could have found a way to stick an expletive in there that didn’t sound awkward, I would have).

Think about it: we celebrate language every day. Is it possible to get through an entire day without coming into contact with language? No. (Well, in babies/other people who don’t necessarily have language, it might be, but that’s not most people—and especially not people reading this.) People have to think, and they generally think in language. Or they have to hear and see language. Somehow, they come into contact with it. If you love language and embrace that love, you love language and embrace that love. If you use language, you’re celebrating it.

Now with the whole “Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar” and the main point of this post: I am of the camp that says, don’t tell people how they should speak or write. Because who gets to decide what this so-called good grammar is? Language is changing, people—changing constantly. And it’s changing for a reason. If it’s changing because the rules are too complex and people are dropping them, so be it. If it’s changing because the rules aren’t complex enough and people want to add more, so be it.

Language is used so people can express themselves. If they want to express themselves in all lowercase letters, no punctuation, and incorrect spellings, so be it—that’s their expression.

Moral of the Story: This post is already too near preachy to warrant a moral.

Shifts

So. I feel kind of bad for just directing you to a different site for today’s post. But I just found out yesterday that YourDictionary.com does a word-of-the-day thing complete with etymology and suggested usage. This is pretty cool. And then I saw the post for yesterday (“splendiferous”) and the etymology was amusing and I couldn’t think of another way to say what it says without just ripping it off anyway, so I’m just going to send you guys over there.

<http://www.yourdictionary.com/wotd/splendiferous>

Moral of the Story: Even when a word maintains the same denotative meaning, the connotation can shift over time to make the word something completely different from what was originally intended.

More Wording

The topic of today’s post is “disenchant.” This verb breaks into dis + enchant. I am in love with the prefix “dis-”. Very much so. Want to know why? Because it can mean so many different things. Here’s what the Webster’s New World College Dictionary has for it:

1. : also used as an intensifier [disannul]

a. away, apart dismiss, disperse

b. to deprive of, expel from disfrock, disbar

c. to cause to be the opposite of disable

d. to fail, cease, refuse to      dissatisfy, disappear, disallow

e. to do the opposite of disjoin, disintegrate

2.     not, the opposite of, un- dishonest, dissatisfied, displeasing
3.     opposite of, lack of disease, disunion

For “disenchant,” we are using dis- to mean “the opposite of”–to disenchant someone means to do the opposite of enchanting them, or “to set free from an enchantment or illusion.”

Moral of the Story: Maybe part of the reason languages are so difficult for some people is that little three-letter prefixes can mean seven or eight different things, depending on which word they’re part of.

Things That Mean The Same

. . . and aren’t so very different.

My mind likes to give me random words/images at least once a day. Yesterday was an elephant. The day before that was an umbrella. Tonight was crêpe paper–don’t ask me why. Anyway, I got to thinking about crêpe paper and I got to thinking about crêpes (which I loathe, just FYI). And I got to thinking that there had to be something in common between them since they had the same word, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what. So I went into the etymology of “crêpe.”

For those of you who don’t know, crêpe paper is called that because it looks like crêpe, a type of cloth that has wrinkles in it in much the same way as crêpe paper. According to the Webster’s New World College Dictionary, crêpe comes from the Latin crispus (as does the word “crisp”). Crispus means “curly, wavy.” This would explain what crêpe paper and crêpes have in common, I suppose.

Moral of the Story: I guess it only makes sense that multiple words come from the same root. I also guess I should have realized what crêpe paper and crêpes have in common.

Why Do Today

. . . what can be done tomorrow. If you haven’t guessed, the etymology of the day is for the word “procrastinate,” because that seems to be a big part of my life today (unfortunately?).

Now, the reason I’m actually doing the etymology for this is, I tried to break “procrastinate” down to its morphemes and couldn’t figure out what I was seeing. Because “pro” means it’s a good thing, right? And procrastination is never a good thing; it always leads to too much stress (in my experience, anyway). When I was talking this over with a friend, he pointed out that “-nate” usually occurs in negative things (terminate, detonate, etc.). To further procrastinate (I have three days to reread the entirety of Homer’s Odyssey), I turned to the Webster’s New World College Dictionary (one of my most-loved mistresses).

I did have the correct morphological piece in “pro,” but I was pulling from the wrong vocabulary. “Procrastinate” comes from the Latin procrastinatus, from procrastinare, formed of the elements pro, meaning “forward,” and crastinus, meaning “belonging to the morrow”–cras means “tomorrow.”

Moral of the Story: There is always a way to put things off for longer.