Making Up Your Mind About Waking Up Your Mind by Richard van der Linde

Author:Richard van der Linde [Silva, Wilfredo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nonfiction
Publisher: Richard Van Der Linde
Published: 2022-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

TOPIC 10

ETYMOLOGY - THE ORIGINS OF WORDS

“The dictionary itself is circular.

It defines words in terms of other words.”

~ Alan Watts

I ordinary life, we sometimes unknowingly use words or expressions the meanings of which used to be quite the opposite not too long ago. For example, take the word bimbo. When it came in use in the early 1900s, it only referred to a big, brutish, security-guard kind of a guy, whereas we now use it pretty much exclusively to indicate a dumb, attractive girl.1

Likewise, various words often used in the context of self- development or the essence of life might have meant something else in earlier times – perhaps even the opposite of how we commonly use them nowadays. And some have a double meaning, similar to how the ancient Egyptian word “ken” used to mean both “strong” and “weak.”

If that’s really the case, it would be useful to know the original meaning as well, especially if the meaning has become very different – there might be or have been a blind spot in play at some point which changed the general way some words

are used. You’ll see why this is relevant after we take a look at some of these words, the usefulness of which is probably quite incomprehensible to most of us.

For perspective, there’s often much debate about the origin of a word. Each etymological dictionary has a vast array of unique interpretations. Etymology is not an exact science, and it’s virtually impossible to say which interpretation is the (most) correct one. However, if we combine the etymological explorations in the various talks and books of Alan Watts – a 20th-century philosopher with a keen interest in both Eastern religions and languages – supplemented with input from etymological dictionaries, we get the following interesting set of relations between words. Since it certainly does not involve a scientific inquiry, this is rather a bonus chapter, albeit a possibly interesting one.

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