Tag: etymology

Etymology or “It’s All Greek To Me”

December 3, 2024

Ever since I was a little girl I have been enthralled with etymology. Maybe it was studying Latin, which I had to learn in school in Argentina, when I was around 10…for 3 years! I was sick and tired of all the “hic haec hoc” and “amo amas amat” and all the declensions that we had to repeat by rote. It was bad enough to learn Spanish and English verbs. Life seemed complicated then.

All that effort paid off my Senior year of High School in the US. I happened to use the word “triturate” with one of my teachers, and he bet me a steak dinner that it did not exist. I knew I had him. He challenged me in front of many classmates, so I accepted the bet. He went to the dictionary and BINGO I had won. (He never had to deliver on the bet since I ended up leaving the school a few weeks later).

Fast forward to my attempts to communicate in Russian. When I was desperate, I would take a word with a Latin base and give it a Russian accent, and again, BINGO, most times the Russians would understand because there are many Latin-based words adopted into Russian. A few decades later, it was Cyrillic that helped me read menus and train station signs in Greece, so I could maneuver a little and not be a bumbling fool. It came in useful to find the entry and exit signs.

So, recently, I was reading some obscure article, that led me to a fascinating discovery. Well, for me. I know. My mind works in convoluted ways.

It turns out that metabolism, ballistic, emblem, hyperbole, embolism, parable, problem, all these words stem from the Greek word “diaballein”. Same with symbolic -which means to bring together- and diabolic, which comes from “diabolos”, or to tear apart. “Diabolos” is derivative of “diaballein”, which means to throw, scatter, rend asunder, hence the origin of the word “devil”, that derives from “diabolos”.

I am contemplating either getting a Greek/English dictionary just for fun, or spending some time learning Greek. After all, I’m at that stage in my life where they do recommend that you exercise your brain to keep it from atrophying. I certainly can identify with Mr. Portokalos!

Huronia, the Land of Canada’s and North America’s Oldest Christmas Carol

December 3, 2024

I had long forgotten a delightfully illustrated thin book that I used to read and sing to my children, many moons ago.  It told the story of the Gitchy Manitou. 

Ah, the cobweb tendrils of my life never cease to amaze me.  I’ve had Québec on my mind for the last couple of months, because it is such a most beautiful city, rich in history, and so near to where I live.

The Sunday before Thanksgiving, I sat in a cold church, and, in the middle of the service, I heard the organist begin a song.  The words and the melody tugged at my memory:  “‘Twas in the moon of wintertime, When all the birds had fled…”  I looked at the program and there it was, The Huron Carol.  

The lyrics of the first Christmas Carol of North America are short and tell a story.  For some it’s a meaningful story.  For others it’s just a tradition that had consequences, bad and good.

However, for me, it was fascinating to discover that the author of this ancient Carol was a French Jesuit priest who hailed from Normandy.  Jean de Brébeuf lived among the Hurons and is recognized as someone who produced so many ethnographic records on the Hurons that his efforts were pivotal in preserving the Huron (Wendat) language.  His accounts were included in a collection of documents referred to as The Jesuit Relations, which are considered an important historical resource. He actually wrote a dictionary, among other things.

Brébeuf paid a dear price for being a missionary.  All accounts (at least the ones I have read) point to his love for the Hurons.  The Hurons’ archenemies were the Iroquois, who destroyed Huronia.  Yet even the Iroquois were so impressed at his bravery in the face of excruciating torture that they ate his heart in a symbolic recognition of his fortitude.  Or so they say.  History is not pretty.  But I can’t help but admire someone who took the time to study and create something that has been acknowledged as a legacy.  

Brébeuf became one of the patron saints of Canada, and, as far as I know, he still remains one, despite modern-day criticisms of how he described some of his encounters with the Hurons.

In my love of etymology, lo and behold, I discovered that Jean de Brébeuf wrote about a game being played among the Hurons in 1636 and it was he who named the game “lacrosse”, because the stick reminded him of a bishop’s shepherd’s staff or crozier.  

The Huron Carol, or Jesous Ahatonhia, beautifully illustrated by Frances Tyrrell, was published in 1991, and sometime soon, after that year, my Mother gave it to my children for Christmas.  They loved the story and the drawings.  It was a gentle introduction to a far away land with familiar concepts.   

At the time, little did my Mother know how one day, 25+ years, a little protestant church in the Blue Hill peninsula of Maine would spark memories of little children, pretty songs, tender memories of Québec, dictionaries and saints. 

The below video was a joint production of the Aboriginal People’s Television Project and the CBC Radio Canada. It aired in 2002.

A Little Lie is Like a Little Pregnancy…

September 20, 2024

One of the things I used to try to inculcate in my children was the importance of never lying, because once one is categorized as a liar, the link of trust is broken, and it really can’t be repaired. The worst thing that can happen to a person is to be seen as a liar, because their word will be forever doubted, even when they speak the truth (Peter and the Wolf comes to mind).

Lately, I keep returning to a conundrum of my making, and this is how my mind works: why would I lie, not to protect myself or hide my shame, but rather, to protect someone else’s misdeed, when I know full well that there is misconduct involved? There’s the rub that led me to a vortex of etymological discovery and legal peregrination.

The Greek word “diaballein” means “to slander, attack, cast apart”. “Dia” meaning “across, through” and “ballein” meaning “to throw”. It literally means “to throw across, to scatter” (e.g., families get scattered, communities get divided). It is the source of another Greek word “diavolos” , which is the provenance of the term we all know, “the devil”.

Now this led me to discover the origin of that other name for devil, “ho sataunus”, which is also Greek and based on the Hebrew word that means “The Accuser”, and is the origin of the name Satan.

A philosopher I read somewhere even stated that in today’s world, The Accuser’s role could be seen as that of a Prosecuting Attorney, whose job is to blame and blame the accused: he/she did it! (Poor lawyers, they never get a break!).

We mere mortals engage in accusations all the time when we gossip, point the finger, play the shame and blame game, and/or destroy someone’s character. How many times are we oblivious to carelessly wounding others by saying or implying an untruth that may wreck their family life, their reputation and character, all done through a lie?

At the end of the day, the Bible calls the devil the father of lies… and for good reason.

I leave it to better writers than me to share my conclusions through their thoughts on lies and lying:

A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth. (Aesop)

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar. (Abraham Lincoln)

You can always lie to others and hide your actions from them… but you can not fool yourself.    (Also A. Lincoln).

A little lie is like a little pregnancy; it doesn’t take long before everyone knows. (C.S. Lewis)

A truth can walk naked…but a lie always needs to be dressed. (Khalil Gibran)

Lastly, Fyodor Dostoevsky has a brutal passage in the Brothers Karamazov on lying.

By the way, daffodils symbolize honesty and truth. I like daffodils!