If the names are not correct, the language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If the language is not in accordance with the truth of things, matters cannot be brought to success. When matters cannot be brought to success, rites and music do not flourish. When rites and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly applied. When punishments are not properly applied, people do not know how to act. Thus a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses should be appropriate, and also that what he says should be executed appropriately. What the superior man demands is only that there be nothing incorrect in his words.
~ Kung Fu Tzu
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The epigraph above should answer the question of why write about this topic at all. Chances are that if you’ve read something else that I’ve penned, whether fiction or non-fiction, you’ve noticed that peppered throughout there are discussions of words and what they mean, how we use them or fail to, and how we should and should not do so. It seems that I simply cannot help it. I have been wondering about words for a long time. Part of the reason why the topic interests me so much is that I have a couple of metaphysical assumptions about language. First, that there must have been an original language given to mankind, to Adam in fact, and that he learned it from his creator. And thus, secondly, that words are not arbitrary, but on the contrary, their proper form and proper use, or as close to them as is possible for us, is very important. More than that, fundamental. So much of our understanding of the world is tied to words that it seems obvious to say so, but then again, many people say so without concerning themselves with the origins of words or the shades of meaning they acquired over time, and how, and what both have to teach us. Of course, understanding and wisdom are not made of words alone, but words are among the primary tools we use to make sense of things. And it seems to me that many of these tools have been blunted with wear, and if we want to take a stab at meaning, so to speak, then we need to sharpen our tools. But not only that, it is also possible, and likely, that some wear and tear is not accidental, but purposeful, and thus we are led to use certain words incorrectly. We will have time to examine many examples of this, but in short, if the purpose of writing this is to sharpen our words, the purpose of doing that is to sharpen our understanding.
I debated briefly whether I should start with a discussion of the word Word or of the word that is the title, Etymosophy, given that it is a neologism. My left brain seems to have taken the lead and suggested the latter, since it is more logical to do so, ironically enough. This mention of left brains is not irrelevant since one way to understand the difference between etymosophy and etymology is as right brain and left brain processing of words, respectively, although one shouldn’t take these distinctions too seriously, and I certainly don’t. While I am not the first to use the word etymosophy, there are very few instances of it that I could find, and especially of a serious nature, and so the effort may not be in vain. In any case, it seems like a rather obvious construction, etymosophy, for one who is interested in words and also in what may be called the deeper, but also less solid and more fluid, meaning of things (hence, for example, the common distinction between theology and theosophy, or anthropology and anthroposophy, but funnily enough, not astrology, which should more appropriately be called astrosophy, and what is called astronomy should be called astrology).
Thus, we shall start by examining the first component of both etymosophy and etymology: the hellenic Etumos. I will not be using the hellenic script, but only the latin one, for the sake of ease of both writing and reading, and since this is not to be an academic work, but a leisured one, yet let us note in passing that the letter Y used to have the same sound as the letter U, and if you look closely you can trace the very form of it from one to the other - a Y is more or less a U standing on a flamingo leg - in fact, a V, the modern sound of which the latins did not have, and hence the letter W, looking like two Vs, is called Double U. Eventually, in the latin script, the flamingo sat down and hid its leg. Why the sounds changed is another matter, but in any case, and while this is not so very important for what we are going to discuss, we say, for example, ‘misteri’ but the hellenes would say, ‘musteri’. It doesn’t help that in the english language, so anarchic in its relation between script and sound, the letter Y is used sometimes where it originally was read U, but other times where the latin script would have I - such as, precisely, etymology or etymosophy - the first Y originally with sound U, the latter with sound I. Enough of this, let us go back to Etumos. What is it.
It comes from Eteos, which means nothing more and nothing less than True, or Real. One can always go back further, but after a point it becomes murky, and while we will definitely be referring to Proto-Indo-European (PIE), it is important to keep in mind that PIE is a reconstruction, and hence one must always add one’s own grains of salt - which, at the risk of putting the cart before the horse, one may say is precisely the method of etymosophy. For the sake of completeness let us say that Eteos is traced back to a reconstructed root *set - meaning Stable. The suggested meaning, thus, is that the Truth is something stable, but it is humorous that we establish this (eSTABlish, as you can see if you squint or if we highlight it, meaning to make stable) through a rather unstable academic reconstruction like PIE. Let us not pay too much attention to it. For now, the important thing is that the Etymo in both etymology and etymosophy means True, or Real, and thus both words purport to deal with the Truth or Reality. Because these words are so vast, etymology came to mean at different times more specific things. Originally, that is, when the word was coined, and the etumon married to the logia, it was used as the study of meanings, which is more or less how it is used now as well, though confined specifically to words, and how could it not, but in between it was also used as the study of histories - hence its use in Isidore of Seville’s famous Etymologies, which are really histories, encyclopaedic entries more than anything else, and why the book is also known as Origins. One can see how both the study of history and the study of meaning can be said to be studies of truth, or of reality. But really, in the end, the study of meanings is indissociable from the study of words.
Let us note something else in passing. You will see from the above paragraphs how a work of this kind is so very prone to digression and tangents, for as my people say or have said, words are like cherries, pulling one pulls another, and when we are talking about one word, because we are using words to talk about words, how else would we do it, we are led quite naturally to drift from the one we are pursuing to pursuing another. Yet an endless cherry picking is no cherry picking at all, but rather its opposite, yet still we must apologize in advance for digression and tangent, which can be cumbersome and confusing. I hope it does not distract from the essential. But really it is unavoidable, and it may prove fruitful after all, perhaps not in a work of etymology, but in a work of etymosophy most definitely. And thus let us go back to the distinction between the two.
Now that we have seen that both etymology and etymosophy purport to deal with what is true, we will have to find the difference between one and the other in the components they do not share. Now, words ending in -logy are quite common, and we all know a bunch of them. Still, even a superficial look at some of them will reveal we don’t use them properly most of the time. We’ll get there, let us start from the beginning. And in the beginning, as most everyone knows, was the Logos. This word means, well, Word (which, by the by, is a cognate of the latin Verbum), and from there also, Explanation, Discourse, Study - since, as we have established, it is almost impossible to study things without using words. If we go back to PIE, it likely came from the meaning of Gathering, which in a way is precisely what a study does. Thus, words ending in -logy are normally, and correctly, used as the study of something, hence psychology, sociology, technology. Wait, notice something. One of these does not belong. This is the beginning of some of our troubles.
If we aimed to speak in an etymologically correct way, we would say technology is the study of technique, but in fact the use of the word designates rather its application. The correct designation would be, not technology, but simply technique (a word which contains its own manifestation). When we speak of ‘technological’ issues we do not speak of issues of the study of technique, but simply of issues of technique. This confusion is not unique to the word technology, but it certainly hinders any proper discussion of the phenomenon, which is tragic, since it permeates so much of our experience here and now. But in fact this error is now common to almost all words formed with -logy. When someone refers to ‘psychological’ or ‘sociological’ or ‘ecological’ problems, they are not referring, after all, to problems of the study of the psyche or the study of society or the study of the environment, but to problems of the psyche, society and the environment themselves. Luckily, though perhaps it is only because not many care about it, no one has thought to say that one who does not know the meaning of words has ‘etymological’ problems.
So, etymology is the study of meanings, and since meanings are conveyed through words, it is the study of words. So, what is etymosophy, is it not a study as well. Yes, in a sense. The -sophy comes from Sophia, and thus from Sophos, the first came to mean wisdom, and the second, where it originated, meant more generally skill, or cleverness. Academics are unsure of its origin beyond that, thus we have no PIE to cling to. But this too is interesting, for etymosophy is certainly less solid, less defined, more intuitive, than etymology. Perhaps that is why the words formed with this root have served so many disparate purposes. Consider for example that it has yielded both philosophy, the love of wisdom, and also sophism, which can be said to be the rape of it. Yet at the same time Sophos also had originally more tangible applications, such as specific skilfulness in carpentry, music and so on, but also sound judgement in everyday affairs. So it seems to us that, while etymology occupies a middle space, being logical and defined, etymosophy may be said to be placed both below and above. On the one hand, a more lofty and ethereal kind of understanding, which is what is usually called wisdom rather than mere knowledge, and on the other, a more down to earth kind of understanding, one that requires getting one’s hands dirty. Academics, and hence etymologists, generally do not bother with either, of course, they stay on their lane. We, on the other hand, may have to venture into other lanes, and end up perhaps all over the place. It is the price of admission, I’m afraid.
This, in short, is what we understand as etymosophy, a sort of bird’s eye view of words, as well as the descent of the bird towards the soil to find some seeds to chew on. Now, of course, it is a highly speculative endeavor, and we use that word too, advisedly - and would it surprise you to learn that speculation and advising, and all the words composed similarly, concern a form of seeing (hence, spectacles and visors, and many others). Thus etymosophy is a form of seeing through the words, instead of taking them only in and of themselves. The very thing escapes definition. But here is a very relevant example: academic etymology has it that there are two distinct PIE roots *bha, one meaning to shine (and hence, derivatively, light - and used in, for example, photo or phantasm), and the other meaning to speak (as in fable or infant). Etymosophical insight, thus, provides a bridge between the two. One can see immediately how speech is a form of shining a light on things. When a child starts learning the names of things, he starts also to see them more clearly, and to be able to associate between them.
So perhaps we can say, as a conclusion, that if in the beginning was the Word, the Logos, before that beginning was the Wisdom, the Sophia, without which any speech, even that which creates a world, is mere imitation. And it is the devil which is the ape of the god, and not the other way around. So let us use words not just as we have received them, not just as apes, but as humans, wisely. Let us, in short, be etymosophists.
David Bohm, theoretical physicist, near the end of his life, ditched his primary field of research (not entirely, of course) for a deep dive into language, and ended up working on developing what he called the rheomode, a verb based language that allowed the speaker to more accurately and reverently acknowledge the world not as a cluster of nouns, fixed and immovable persons places and things, but as existing in a continual state of process. The Algonquin family of languages was created similarly — they would never say, “there’s a river” they would instead say, “that water is rivering over there,” because they know it hasn’t always been a river and it won’t always be.
Excited to read the next installment!
I await chapter one.