Etymology, the study of the origin of words and the history of their meaning, is my favorite hobby. In the course of reading, writing, or just going about my daily business, I often find myself coming across a word that I'd like to look up. I love looking up words, even ones I know. There is such clarity simply in reviewing definitions. Dictionary.com and Wiktionary, together, are an outstanding resource that between them (plus the occasional Urban Dictionary visit for new slang) cover basically everything in English, and cover it well.
But there's more to words than just their definitions, and oftentimes I find even greater insight by looking at their etymologies. Dictionaries list this information too. Etymology not only clarifies words for me; it often sheds light on entire subjects.
For instance, the etymological root of the word
happiness means "luck." In contrast, the word
gladness has its roots in the concept of "smooth," and, even farther back, "shine." So, once upon a time, one who had encountered favor and good fortune might be called "happy." And "glad" might be said of someone positively shining with good emotion. Today we use these two words as synonyms (and there's nothing wrong with that), but, once upon a time, they referred to distinct ideas.
How about the word
mana? That stuff we use to cast magic spells in video games. Where does that come from? In fact it's a very new addition to English, having come into usage via academia in the 20th century, where it was soon taken up in fantasy. But originally it comes from Polynesia:
Mana is a foundation of the Polynesian worldview, a spiritual quality with a supernatural origin and a sacred, impersonal force. To have mana implies influence, authority, and efficacy—the ability to perform in a given situation. The quality of mana is not limited to individuals: Peoples, governments, places and inanimate objects may also possess mana, and its possessors are accorded respect.
When I discovered this, just a few months ago actually, it was like digging up buried treasure. It was an incredibly exciting find! In fantasy, mana is rather degenerate: It's just a green bar that lets you cast certain spells. It doesn't
mean anything. Occasionally there's some hand-wavy line about "the energy of the planet" or "the favor of the gods," but really it means nothing. So if you're someone who likes digging a little deeper, imagine how fascinating it can be to start connecting the idea of spellcasting to the idea of efficacy and influence. When you stop and think about what magic
actually is, a discovery like this is pay dirt!
We even got a taste of the power of etymology in
Chrono Trigger:
Ayla's word. "La" mean fire. "Vos" mean big.
Now, there's nothing particularly sophisticated about that, the way
mana originally referred to a highly developed concept. But this is the deepest explanation we get of Lavos until near the end of the game, and there's a certain profundity to its simplicity.
Some people don't get it. There's even a GameFAQs thread of people being angry at Ayla for making up such a "dumb" name. And that's okay. Etymological insight isn't mandatory. You don't need to know the full family history of a word to get the gist of it, or to use it in daily conversation. And, if you don't understand what you're really seeing, there's no value in looking at "happy" and knowing that it once meant "lucky."
For me, however, it's deeply enlightening to understand we came to use a word the way we use it here in the present day. If I asked you to think of the meaning of the word
city, you'd probably imagine an assemblage of buildings and bustle. Ironically, the original meaning was almost opposite to that: It ultimately comes from a proto-Indoeuropean root
kei, meaning, as a verb, "to lie" or "to rest," and, as a noun, "bed" or "couch." So the earliest concept of a city was that of a homestead or a resting place.
This brings us to one of my favorite subtopics in etymology: cognates. Cognates are etymological cousins: They may have very different meanings, but they share the same root. For instance,
happiness is a cognate of
hapless (which better retains the original meaning).
Glad counts among its cognates the word
glass, which very much fits the descriptions of "smooth" and "shine." And
city has, for one of its many cognates, the word
cemetery. A different kind of resting place!
Cognates aren't just about shining light on a given word by contrasting it with another word whose contemporary meaning is closer to the etymological root. They also of course don't come only in pairs. I like to think of them as insights into themselves and each other, and to the etymological roots bearing them. They can be fascinating, like
pray and
precarious, both with a root meaning "made by entreaty." And cognates can be incredibly amusing, like
peace and
pectin (the gelatin), with a root referring to the idea of binding and holding fast.
You don't have to look very far to find cognates. Most words have several cognates in English alone, let alone in other languages. They're one of the great bonuses of etymological research.
Getting back to etymology, I'll close by saying that etymologies are diverse, and endlessly fascinating.
Some etymologies are very rich and fruitful, with many words always changing. (
Change isn't one of them; its etymology has been the same throughout its known history, coming from a root
kambos meaning the same thing.)
Some etymologies are infuriating, like
harem, whose root means "to bar the door."
Some etymologies are hilarious, like
preposterous, which means "pulled out of one's ass."
Some etymologies are not especially straightforward, like
noon. It comes from
nones, which originally meant “nine,” as in the ninth hour of the day. But that’s according to the seven canonical hours, of which nones was fifth. In modern time, that’s three o’clock in the afternoon. In other words, 12 used to be 9 in that it was 5 out of 7, which was actually 3.
Some etymologies are judgmental. The word
muse comes from a root meaning "snout," as in "to stand with one's nose turned up in the air" (i.e., wasting time by pondering). It's a cognate to
muzzle and possibly to
nose.
Some etymologies are uncertain. The root of
religious is a very old one and a definitive etymology is uncertain, but the modern consensus is that it is cognate to words such as ligament, with the original meaning being “to tie down” or “fasten” in the sense of obligating humans to the authority of the gods. Yet, we don't know for sure.
And some etymologies are completely unknown, lost to history.
