Etymologically speaking... etymologically.

I am fascinated by the origins of words. Yes, I am a geek and yes I am ok with that. What I am not ok with is the fact that other people don't seem to care about it as much as I do. I understand that meanings of words change from generation to generation, but where the word comes from stays the same.

The other day I read a commentary in Ode magazine. Below is an excerpt of In the beginning was the joke by John Lloyd:

There’s a mysterious passage in the Bible, that goes like this: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." This passage has the unmistakable ring of truth, which is curious, because it also appears to be meaningless gibberish. At first sight, that is. The word "Word" in this context is translated from the Greek logos, which means "word," of course, but in the particular sense of "that which expresses the inner thought." So we can retranslate the sentence as, "In the beginning was the Thought and the Thought was with God and the Thought was God." Now this is getting interesting, because in all the great Eastern religions, consciousness is considered the ground of being, preceding the clumsy and annoying business of matter.

Logos can be understood, more generally, to mean "speech" or "conversation." So another translation is, "In the beginning was Speech…" This is consistent with Genesis, wherein the first thing that happens is God says "Let there be light." In this reading, speech is more ancient than the laws of physics, which, again, may not be very scientific (at least not yet) but is quite interesting.

Now when logos passes into Latin, it takes on yet another meaning, one that, for all I know, preserves a long-lost original Greek usage that didn’t make it into Liddell & Scott’s dictionary. And that meaning is "joke": "In the beginning was the Joke and the Joke was with God and the Joke was God." And you know, ever since I found that translation I’ve been a lot more cheerful.

I too have been a lot more cheerful since I found that translation. So that got-me-a-thinkin' ... How can I share this passion for word origin with the world? So what I think I am going to do is just randomly pick words from my posts and tack on an asterisk* to any word that I think has a cool origin and then at the end of the post I will just list the them. I wonder* what we'll learn from this?

More to come...

M
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asterisk: 1382, from L.L. asteriscus, from Gk. asterikos "little star," dim. of aster "star." The meaning "figure used in printing and writing to indicate footnote, omission, etc." first recorded 1612.

wonder: O.E. wundor "marvelous thing, marvel, the object of astonishment," from P.Gmc. *wundran (cf. O.S. wundar, M.Du., Du. wonder, O.H.G. wuntar, Ger. wunder, O.N. undr), of unknown origin. In M.E. it also came to mean the emotion associated with such a sight (c.1290). The verb is from O.E. wundrian. Used colloquially in Pennsylvania Ger. areas in some transitive senses (It wonders me that ... for "I wonder why ..."); this was common in M.E. and as late as Tindale (1533), also survives in Yorkshire/Lincolnshire. Wonderful is recorded from c.1100. Wonderland "imaginary realm" is from 1790; wonder-worker (1599) translates Gk. thaumatourgos.