# The etymology of the word "word"



## Yendred

I've noticed how the word "_word_" has different (really?) etymologies from one language to each other (e.g. English _word_, French _mot_, Spanish _palabra_, Russian _слово_, ...)
So what's the etymology of the word "_word_" in your language, and does anyone know why it's so different from one language to each other?

_À tout seigneur, tout honneur_, I'll start with French:
_*mot*_ comes from Latin _muttum ("growl"), _itself coming from an onomatopoeia _"mutmut"  _


----------



## Michelvar

That's interesting, as "word" and Latin "verbum" have a common indo-european root. And in spite of this, "verbum" was not the ancestor of the word chosen by French.


----------



## Dymn

In Catalan we have both _*paraula*_ (from Latin _parabola _"comparison, parable", from Greek) and *mot* (like in French). _Paraula _is the most common.

I don't think it has a higher diversity than other concepts in European languages.


----------



## Circunflejo

In Spanish, the usual word is palabra (same Latin origin that Catalan Paraula).
In Bizkaian Basque, berba is used (from Latin verbum, I guess). There's also hitz in Basque as well as ele but I don't know their etymologies. You can find some clues about it at searching on this web: http://projetbabel.org/basque/diccionario.php (click on the UK flag to change it to English) but I wouldn't consider them definitive answers.


----------



## Ectab

In Arabic, the word for "word" is كلمة (kalima-t) from the root k-l-m (to speak). The semantic relation is obvious.


----------



## Yendred

Dymn said:


> In Catalan we have both _*paraula*_ (from Latin _parabola _"comparison, parable", from Greek)


Great! I had never realized that French _parole_ and _parabole_ had the same etymology. Now you told me, it's quite obvious, thank you!

I quote the Wiktionary article about _parole_:


> [Le latin vulgaire _paraula_] a remplacé _verbum_ dans les langues romanes (sauf le roumain du fait de la religion orthodoxe). A cause de la fréquence de son emploi dans la Bible et les gloses, _verbum_ s’est spécialisé pour traduire le grec λόγος, _lógos, le Verbe._


----------



## Yendred

Any Russian specialist to tell about the etymology of _слово_?


----------



## Dymn

Yendred said:


> Great! I had never realized that French _parole_ and _parabole_ had the same etymology. Now you told me, it's quite obvious, thank you!


Yes. Incidentally, _parlare/parlar/parler_ have the same etymology as _parola/paraula/parole/etc._ too.


----------



## apmoy70

In Modern Greek the word for...word (no pun intended) is *«λέξη»* /ˈlek͡si/ (fem.) < Classical deverbative 3rd declension feminine noun *«λέξις/λέξεως» léksis* (nom. sing.), *léksĕōs* (gen. sing.) --> _reason, way of speech, diction, style, (specific) word, phrase_ < Classical v. *«λέγω» légō*.
Note that in MoGr the "difficult" nouns with complicated declined forms, belonging to the ancient 3rd declension, have been now simplified. The ancient «λέξις» is now «λέξη» and is declined regularly (according to the anisosyllabic feminine nouns with endings in «-η» (sing.), «-εις» (pl.)).
From «λέξις» > lexicon, lexicography, lexicology etc.


----------



## AndrasBP

Dymn said:


> I don't think it has a higher diversity than other concepts in European languages.


  Germanic languages use cognates of 'word' (Wort, woord, ord).
Baltic languages also use a related word: Latvian '_vārds_' means both 'word' and 'name', Lithuanian '_vardas_' only means 'name'.



Yendred said:


> Any Russian specialist to tell about the etymology of _слово_?


'Slovo' is a common Slavic word, not only Russian. It comes from the Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'fame'.
The semantic connection is something along the lines of 'fame' > 'rumour' > 'what can be heard'.


----------



## Circunflejo

Ectab said:


> In Arabic, the word for "word" is كلمة (kalima-t) from the root k-l-m (to speak).


That's the origin of Maltese Kelma.

It's ger in Breton from proto-Celtic garyos. However, Irish uses focal from proto-Celtic woxtlom (dispute).

One of the options in Romanian is cûvant (from Latin conventus, gathering) and Slovenian makes use of beseda from proto-Slavic besěda (gathering).


----------



## Sobakus

Most of Slavic continues_ slȍvo,_ from PIE ḱlew- "to hear", and cognate to _slàva_ "fame, glory". This has a curious exception in the Balkans, namely Slovenian, BCS and Macedonian, where the word for "word" gets metonymically replaced with something related to "gathering" or "assembly", which is what also happened in Romanian _cuvânt_ and Greek _κουβέντα_.

This can be seen in Slovenian _besẹ̑da_ ("conversation" in other languages), BCS _rijȇč_ etc. ("speech" elsewhere), Macedonian _збор_ (< "gathering").

The _ду́ма_ of Bulgarian (< "thought") seems to be of the same vintage, via either "opinion, verdict" or "the matter which the gathering is about"; note that the meaning "thought" itself comes from "judgement", as the word is a Germanic borrowing, the same as English _doom_.


----------



## Sobakus

Sardinian (inasmuch as it can be said to be one language) has _favèddu, faèddu, foèddu, fuèddu_, probably backformed from _faveddàre_ "to talk", from *_fābellāre_, backformed from _fābella_ "a small narration, tale" and replacing _fābulāre_ "to talk casually, gossip etc." (which gave Sp. _hablar)_, itself from _fābula_ "talk, tale, gossip etc.", from PIE *bʰeh₂- "to speak".

It also has _parà(g)ula_ as a loan from Italian, and a cognate of French _mot_ in _mutire, muntire_ "to call" < _muttīre_ "to mumble, make low noises".

I've just found out that this meaning of _muttum_ is actually attested already in late antiquity: _prōverbiāliter dīcimus '*muttum* nūllum ēmīseris', id est, _*verbum* ('we have a proverbial saying "you won't/wouldn't have even let out *a grunt*", that is *a word*').


----------



## OBrasilo

Slovenian still has _slovo_, but it has changed meaning and means _farewell_ now, but in Old Slovenian (as attested in eg. the Freising Monuments), it still meant  _word_, see eg. "glagolite po nas redka slovesa" - "speak after us the few words". Since _glagoliti_ means _to speak_, I think that _glagol_ back then also meant _word_, and its change in meaning from _word_ to _verb_ would paralle that of the Latin _verbum_.

Also, the original meaning of _beseda_, _discussion_, also still exists in Slovenian, alongside the new meaning of _word_.


----------



## Penyafort

Michelvar said:


> That's interesting, as "word" and Latin "verbum" have a common indo-european root. And in spite of this, "verbum" was not the ancestor of the word chosen by French.


It seems that in very old texts in the Romance languages, verbum was still used with a meaning close to that of 'word'. But it might have become a word used in a rather upper register or with a restricted use, as it seems to happen usually in religious context (word of God) or referring to the verb in grammar. 

The use for 'word' of descendants from _parabola _and _muttum _in most Romance languages means they had probably developed a meaning close to that of 'word' already in medieval Latin.


----------



## apmoy70

Sobakus said:


> Most of Slavic continues_ slȍvo,_ from PIE ḱlew- "to hear", and cognate to _slàva_ "fame, glory". This has a curious exception in the Balkans, namely Slovenian, BCS and Macedonian, where the word for "word" gets metonymically replaced with something related to "gathering" or "assembly", which is what also happened in Romanian _cûvant_ and Greek _κουβέντα_.
> ...


The MoGreek *«κουβέντα»* /kuˈvenda/ (fem.) means more of _chat, chatting_ nowadays than _word_ < Late Byz.Gr. fem. noun *«κουβέντα» kouvénta* --> _informal discussion_ < Byz.Gr. neuter nouns *«κομβέντον» komvénton* & *«κονβέντον» konvénton*, earlier *«κονβέντος» konvéntos* (masc.) & *«κονβένδος» konvéndos* (masc.) --> _gathering, assembly_ < Lat. conventus.
Strangely enough, the negative connotation of it though, retains the meaning of _word_, e.g:
*«Κουβέντα στην κουβέντα πιάστηκαν στα χέρια»* /kuˈvenda ˌstiŋguˈvenda ˈpçastikan ˈsta ˈçerʲa/ --> _word after word_ (lit. _word upon word_) _they came into blows_
*«Μου είπε μια βαριά κουβέντα»* /ˈmu ˈipe ˈmɲa varˈʝa kuˈvenda/ --> _s/he called me bad names_ (lit. _s/he told me a heavy word_).
Verb: *«Κουβεντιάζω»* /kuvendˈʝazo/ --> _to chat_.
«Κουβέντα» & «κουβεντιάζω» are colloquialisms.


----------



## sotos

I have a feeling that several words meaning "word", although from different origins, have a mysterious affinity to meanings like "law", "order" and "co(l)-lection". E.g. verbum is cognate to Gr. ρήμα, from which ρήτρα (term of agreement). The Gr. λέξις (word) and _lego_ (to speak) sounds so close to the latin "law", and "word" is close to "ordo>order". L. _ordo_ (as a military - therefore ordered - unit) has the Gr. equivalent λόχος, from λέχος (bed, from the row of beds in an army camp), in sound close to λόγος and λέγω. And then, parabola, from Gr. παραβολή (παρά + βάλω) in its literal sense is similar to  _co(l)-lection _and the Gr. _συ(λ)-λογή_ (an assemply (=convent > kuventa) of various things side by side). But the rest of us may argue that these thoughts of mine are unscientific, and make sense only on the couch of psychoanalysis.


----------



## PersoLatin

In MP _ēwāz _is "word, utterance" also _wāzag _“utterance, saying”, in Avestan _vac_- "speak, say;", Modern Persian واژه/v_ā_žé, all are cognate with 'vowel/voice' from PIE *wekw-. Modern Persian واژه/v_ā_žé
​


----------



## Apollodorus

sotos said:


> I have a feeling that several words meaning "word", although from different origins, have a mysterious affinity to meanings like "law", "order" and "co(l)-lection".



In common with other ancient languages, Ancient Greek doesn't seem to have had a separate word for “word”. It tended to use terms like λέξις _lexis _and λόγος _logos _whose primary meaning was “that which is said”, “speech”, “phrase”, etc. Another word was ὄνομᾰ, _onoma _“name”.

I don't know why λέξις became standard for "word" in MG (was it the most commonly used?) but the affinity with "law" and "order" may have to do with the fact that law was "something spoken" as well as "an order". This may be "unscientific" but I think it does make sense.


----------



## sotos

Apollodorus said:


> I don't know why λέξις became standard for "word" in MG (was it the most commonly used?)


It seems that it was standard from antiquity. It is used in this sense by Aristotle, Polybius and others. Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott,  A Greek-English Lexicon, λ , λέξεο , λέξις

I think the relation with "law and order" works more in the subconscious, in the sense that words put an order in the chaotic world of feelings, thoughts, insticts, icons, phantasies etc.


----------



## Apollodorus

sotos said:


> I think the relation with "law and order" works more in the subconscious, in the sense that words put an order in the chaotic world of feelings, thoughts, insticts, icons, phantasies etc.



Good point. Maybe everything starts on a subconscious level and that in turn is inspired by a collective consciousness (or Mind of God).

In any case laws were orders or commandments issued by kings or, through kings, by a higher authority such as God. The Law of God was, literally, the Word of God.

Ultimately, laws were intended to enforce law in society in the same way words and ordered thought constructs brought order to an individual’s mind.

This would seem to explicate the link between “lexis” and “lex”: what "lexis" did for the individual mind, "lex" did for society at large.


----------



## gburtonio

Also in English, the word 'word' can have the sense of 'order' in the phrase 'give the word' (e.g. Wait until I give the word). So words are the means of transmitting the order, and the word 'word' has eventually become partially synonymous with the concept of order. (A 'law' is essentially just an order from a person in the position of power).

This seems to me to be a very natural semantic broadening and it doesn't surprise me that it's happened in several languages. I'm not sure the explanation requires any more reference to the subconscious than any other semantic broadening.


----------



## Apollodorus

gburtonio said:


> This seems to me to be a very natural semantic broadening and it doesn't surprise me that it's happened in several languages. I'm not sure the explanation requires any more reference to the subconscious than any other semantic broadening.



True. However, in a Greek context, _logos _which is closely related to _lexis _(from _lego "_to say") acquired a special meaning, representing the link between rational discourse and the order of the world’s rational structure (Heraclitus, _et al._).

_Logos _also occurs in important religious concepts such as Λόγος του Θεού _Logos tou Theou_, "the Word of God".

In philosophy, there was a distinction between _logos prophorikos_ ("the uttered word") and the _logos endiathetos_ ("the word remaining within") which may suggest a connection with the subconscious.

Therefore, a word would have four levels of meaning:

1. Spoken word which has been audibly uttered.

2. Inarticulate word which is held inaudibly in the mind.

3. Subconscious word existing in a latent state in the subconscious.

4. Divine Word which is present in the Mind of God.

To use an approximate Platonic scheme in descending order:

1. Unchanging, eternal Form (Eἶδος) of the Word present in the Cosmic Mind.

2. Latent emanation of the Form in the individual subconscious (nous).

3. Inarticulate word in the individual intellect.

4. Spoken word.

To this may be added a fifth level, that of the written word.

_Logos/logia _also acquired the sense of “science” as in psychology (“the science of mind/soul”), as well as “logic”, etc.

Religion, philosophy, logic and psychology are important elements of our culture as are ethics and law. The word “word” is the link that unites them all into what we call “culture” and “civilisation”, i.e., that which makes us what we are.

Ergo, I would say it is a bit more than just semantics. But this is just my opinion.


----------



## sotos

It seems that it works also in Chinese. I see that the chinese character for  "order" has the constituent (radical) meaning "mouth"  
命 (the square bottom left). 命 - Wiktionary​
The radical "mouth" is standard in words related to "speaking", including the character for "word" (where it is double)
詞​命 - Wiktionary


----------



## OBrasilo

> 詞


This one also exists in Japanese as one of the ways to write the word _kotoba_ ("word") in kanji.


----------



## Sobakus

gburtonio said:


> Also in English, the word 'word' can have the sense of 'order' in the phrase 'give the word' (e.g. Wait until I give the word). So words are the means of transmitting the order, and the word 'word' has eventually become partially synonymous with the concept of order. (A 'law' is essentially just an order from a person in the position of power).
> 
> This seems to me to be a very natural semantic broadening and it doesn't surprise me that it's happened in several languages. I'm not sure the explanation requires any more reference to the subconscious than any other semantic broadening.


My thoughts more or less - adducing abstract social laws (which aren't normally expressed in words) or the ordering of thought seems quite a stretch, not to mention divine laws - did the Ancient Greeks even have any written, worded social laws that they attributed to some particular god? I have a suspicion they'd have trouble taking the idea of gods imposing laws on humans in writing seriously.

Consider also the use "what's the word?", i.e. "what's the situation as it relates to some potential action" and the contrast with _πρᾶξις_ "a doing, (trans-)action" to which it potentially leads. The usage in reference to a single lexical word may be via such single-word orders.



Apollodorus said:


> Therefore, a word would have four levels of meaning:
> 
> Ergo, I would say it is a bit more than just semantics. But this is just my opinion.


It seems to me that you're dressing semantics in metaphysical/emergent/magical garments and saying that these are now more than semantics. I mean, it's normal for words to have multiple meanings, and for new meanings to develop; and it's normal for science (and the earlier attempt at science that is philosophy) to adopt existing words in specialised, technical meanings, normally through metaphor. These can be more or less idionsyncratic and in philosophy can be supplied with more or less ingenious ad hoc explanations (etymologisations), but this can hardly be used to elucidate the word's usage and semantic development in ordinary speech.

Moreover, when you say "in a Greek context, _logos"_ and "a word would have four levels of meaning", you seem to be mixing up the A.Greek word _λόγος_ and the English word _word_, because these sentences only make sense if you substitute Greek for English and vice versa, when in reality the meanings of the two only partly overlap. It's as if you were talking of some super-linguistic concept that you believe finds its purest expression in the range of meanings of the Greek word _λόγος_, which can't help but remind one of the idea (superceded even during the Renaissance) of the Ancient Greeks having had a singular and unrivalled access to truth the human subconscious, or at the very least of the semantics of their word usage having been more directly influenced by their the universal human (or even as you say, collective) subconscious.

Finally you seem to be mixing up the use of _λόγος_ in different philosophical traditions  - "the Word of God part" is, as far as I can see, a mere translation from Hebrew, and its interpretation as "divine law imposed onto Christians" seems to originate either in antique or medieval exegesis (= ad hoc), and might even be plainly modern.

As far as I can see, the only relevant semantic development of the Greek word is "a gathering, collection" (as in Latin) > "an account, reckoning" > "a deliberation" > "an arguing, reasoning out loud" > "a thought, opinion verbally expressed", and hence seemingly splitting into "a law, principle" and "an utterance, expression, phrase", including single-word expressions, albeit exceptionally it seems. The rest of the uses you mention seem to be technical philosophical jargon derived metaphorically from one of these meanings.


----------



## Apollodorus

Sobakus said:


> you seem to be mixing up the use of _λόγος_ in different philosophical traditions  - "the Word of God part" is, as far as I can see, a mere translation from Hebrew, and its interpretation as "divine law imposed onto Christians" seems to originate either in antique or medieval exegesis (= ad hoc), and might even be plainly modern.



They may be different philosophical traditions, but my point was that they are _*in Greek*_. The Christian Gospels were written in Greek and the phrase _Logos tou Theou_, "the Word of God" occurs in the Greek text.

Nobody disputes that _logos _can have different meanings from "speech" to "word", to "reason", to "intelligence", etc., but it does come from _lego_, "to speak", as does _lexis_.

Philo of Alexandria and other Greek-speaking Platonists saw the Logos as directly derived from God and as the primary contemplation from which emerged the intelligible cosmos and the rest of reality.

Similarly, we find a divine _Logos _in Plotinus, etc. All these are terms used in _*Greek philosophical literature *_and constitute an essential element of Greek language. This is precisely why they are found in Greek dictionaries like Liddle and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon:

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott,  A Greek-English Lexicon, λόγος

Also, please note that when I said "Therefore, a word would have four levels of meaning", I used the English term "word". Of course it could be translated into Modern Greek using λέξη _lexi _and into Ancient Greek using some other equivalent term. But that doesn't change anything about the fact that people are entitled to classify the term "word" according to various levels of meaning and that such a classification would be consistent with Greek philosophy.


----------



## berndf

Yendred said:


> does anyone know why it's so different from one language to each other?


Basically because the concept as such is relatively new. We have needed a word for _word_ only since the introduction of dictionaries and formalized grammars. And each language has found a different solution how to label this novel concept.


----------



## Sobakus

Apollodorus said:


> They may be different philosophical traditions, but my point was that they are _*in Greek*_. The Christian Gospels were written in Greek and the phrase _Logos tou Theou_, "the Word of God" occurs in the Greek text.


Yes, but this is a loan-translation, and cannot be used to illustrate the native Greek usage of the word; the word it translates does not seem to possess the connotations you're ascribing to the Greek word, just like the Latin translation _verbum_ covers a different semantic range from both. Using the same logic I would be able to disprove that _logos_ has to do with law because its Latin translation has nothing to do with law.


Apollodorus said:


> Nobody disputes that _logos _can have different meanings from "speech" to "word", to "reason", to "intelligence", etc., but it does come from _lego_, "to speak", as does _lexis_.


That would be true if it was formed in the historical period, and derived in the exact meaning you cite - neither of which is true or even plausible. I've explained the semantic development in my previous post - its starting point is "to gather, collect" ("to speak" seems to be at the very end of it) and judging by its range of meanings, its origin is almost certainly pre-Hellenic, with new meanings developing in parallel with those of the verb.


Apollodorus said:


> Philo of Alexandria and other Greek-speaking Platonists saw the Logos as directly derived from God and as the primary contemplation from which emerged the intelligible cosmos and the rest of reality.


That doesn't have to tell as anything beyond the fact that ancient people were no different from us in also wishing they could say a magic word and have a palace or two magically appear - or even just think them into existence. That is to say, it does not seem to be a metaphor from the meaning "law, order", but probably from a combination of "reckoning, deliberation" and "utterance".


Apollodorus said:


> Similarly, we find a divine _Logos _in Plotinus, etc. All these are terms used in _*Greek philosophical literature *_and constitute an essential element of Greek language. This is precisely why they are found in Greek dictionaries like Liddle and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon:


This can be adduced as evidence that ordianry words get adopted for specialised technical use; that they can be used in loan-translations; even that words' meanings change; but it cannot be linked to any ideas about the collective consciousness. I also want to stress again that the Greek philosophical literature encompasses a great number of schools and individuals, and in this case the first attestation of the meaning "utterance" is separated from Plotinus' innovative use by _no less than a millenium._ It's easy to forget the time spans one is dealing with when it comes to ancient languages. The philosophies, world-views and "collective consciousnesses" that gave rise to these two meanings aren't that far from being antithetical.


Apollodorus said:


> Also, please note that when I said "Therefore, a word would have four levels of meaning", I used the English term "word". Of course it could be translated into Modern Greek using λέξη _lexi _and into Ancient Greek using some other equivalent term. But that doesn't change anything about the fact that people are entitled to classify the term "word" according to various levels of meaning and that such a classification would be consistent with Greek philosophy.


Aren't you taking a whole number of different Greek words (εἶδος, νοῦς, λόγος and what not - I don't know A.Greek) that happen to be translated with a single English term "word" and adducing the fact that they're all translated with one English word as evidence that all these meanings were metaphysically connected in the minds of the Ancient Greeks? Likewise, you seem to be attributing the meaning of "social law, appointed or established order" as inherent to the Greek root λεγ- when some googling informs me that this semantic range rather belonged to the words such as θέμις, θέσμος, νόμος, εὐνομίᾱ etc.

If I'm not misinterpreting you, then you seem to be imposing a temporally, culturally and linguistically undifferentiated interpretation on the problem, something which you seem to be aware of when you use the word "unscientific" in your initial reply, but then lose track of. I'm not saying your initial intuition is necessarily wrong, but it needs sound foundations to take shape, otherwise it becomes a confirmation bias magnet trying to hide its hollow centre.


----------



## Perseas

Sobakus said:


> ("to speak" seems to be at the very end of it)


This meaning already exists in the Homeric works.


----------



## Kevin Beach

St John the Evangelist was so confident of the wider meaning of the word "Logos" in Greek philosophy that he started his Gospel with the words "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God", knowing that his readers (he was then on or near Paphos) would automatically make the connection.


----------



## Apollodorus

Sobakus said:


> If I'm not misinterpreting you, then you seem to be imposing a temporally, culturally and linguistically undifferentiated interpretation on the problem, something which you seem to be aware of when you use the word "unscientific" in your initial reply, but then lose track of. I'm not saying your initial intuition is necessarily wrong, but it needs sound foundations to take shape, otherwise it becomes a confirmation bias magnet trying to hide its hollow centre.



1. From what I see the OP and subsequent comments are not placing any restriction in temporal or cultural terms.

2. When we talk about etymology, we talk about how a word originated and how its use has progressed in time and space.

3. Greek was widely spoken in the region from the time of Alexander the Great and was particularly widely used in the eastern parts of the Roman Empire at the time of Philo, Jesus, etc., and the culture of the Roman Empire especially in the east was cosmopolitan. A Greek word need not reflect "native Greek usage", it can perfectly well reflect its usage in the wider cultural and linguistic space of the Greek-speaking world, in the same way an English word may reflect the way it is used in America and other places outside England.

For example, Philo was a Jew living in Alexandria, Egypt, and writing in Greek under the influence of Platonic or Hellenistic philosophy.

For a clearer picture of the influence of Greek in the region, you may refer to "Did Jesus Speak Greek?" (2015) by G. Scott Gleaves and other scholars.

4. It is a fundamental misunderstanding or, as you say "misinterpretation", to claim that I said that "εἶδος, νοῦς, λόγος and what not"  can be "translated with a single English term "word"". For example, εἶδος _eidos_ as used in my illustration refers to the "Form of the word" _in Platonic philosophical terms_, not to what is normally understood by the term "word".

See Theory of Forms

Hence my logically sound suggestion that the term "word" in any language may be said to have four or five distinct levels of meaning. This may or may not be "scientific" _stricto sensu _but it is based on recorded usage and on rational analysis not irrational speculation.

5. The fact that a Greek word is "almost certainly pre-Hellenic" doesn't mean that it isn't a word that has been used in the Greek language for thousands of years and that it isn't a Greek word.


----------



## Sobakus

Apollodorus said:


> 1. From what I see the OP and subsequent comments are not placing any restriction in temporal or cultural terms.


You create temporal, cultural and linguistic confusion and draw logical inferences from this.


Apollodorus said:


> 2. When we talk about etymology, we talk about how a word originated and how its use has progressed in time and space.


Which requires 1) a defined speech community (space); 2) a defined chronology (time) 3) a distinction between internal and external developments.


Apollodorus said:


> 3. Greek was widely spoken in the region from the time of Alexander the Great and was particularly widely used in the eastern parts of the Roman Empire at the time of Philo, Jesus, etc., and the culture of the Roman Empire especially in the east was cosmopolitan. A Greek word need not reflect "native Greek usage"


Then this cannot serve to demonstrate anything other than the facts that 1) words' meanings change 2) their meanings get borrowed 3) they get metaphorically transferred. If you're trying to demonstrate that everything's made of dough on the example of an apple pie, you need to make sure that the apples in your apple pie aren't actually made of apples that grow on trees that somebody put inside the dough instead of the dough magically turning into apples.


Apollodorus said:


> 4. It is a fundamental misunderstanding or, as you say "misinterpretation", to claim that I said that "εἶδος, νοῦς, λόγος and what not"  can be "translated with a single English term "word"". For example, εἶδος _eidos_ as used in my illustration refers to the "Form of the word" _in Platonic philosophical terms_, not to what is normally understood by the term "word".
> 
> See Theory of Forms
> 
> Hence my logically sound suggestion that the term "word" in any language may be said to have four or five distinct levels of meaning. This may or may not be "scientific" _stricto sensu _but it is based on recorded usage and on rational analysis not irrational speculation.


You know, the "Greek miracle" is said to have occurred because that society had dispensed with the obfuscation of the world by appealing to the divine, shifting the cultural focus from myth to reason (from mythos to logos, ironically enough), and by developing a razor-sharp proto-scientific language to describe the world as accurately as possible, a full equivalent of the cutting edge of modern scientific discourse.

I see quite a bitter irony in the fact that you're using the very achievements of Greek philosophy, today clearly pseudo-scientific and long-superceded, as a theoretical base and even as an authority to appeal to, even as you clearly realise that what you're doing is unscientific. Recorded usage is a great repository of human ignorance, and sourcing your statements in it makes those statements and your actions no more logical than talking about COVID-19 being caused by _miasma,_ or forest fires by an excess of _phlogiston;_ or than sourcing your morality on the tradition of stoning people to death for having sex, or jumping out of your office window when the stocks crash. What was cutting-edge science 260 years ago is gobbledy-gook today - an unmistakeable indication of progress. What was cutting-edge 2600 years ago... well.

There is no such thing as "the term "word" in any language" - apart from being pseudo-science, this is an obfuscationist meaning substitution, something you must realise yourself when you say that _the term "word"_ doesn't mean what _the term "word"_ normally means_._ "Word" is a term in the English language, it possesses a limited set of definitions and one cannot attribute to it meanings arbitrarily made-up or sourced from different languages and a variety of philosophical traditions that make one word explain half of human society. Much less can one impute the resulting creation to the entire human race independent of time, culture or language. The whole purpose of the website we're on is to clarify meaning, and you seem to be hard at work doing precisely the opposite.

If you truly wanted to express a distinct non-linguistic concept, you'd have found an appropriately unambiguous way to express it; of course this concept is pseudo-science rooted in the familiar generalisation fallacy that one encounters every time someone translates English idioms like "I'm blue" literally into other languages, or assumes that speakers of all languages must have the concept of the colour "blue". In scientific discourse this finds an expression in the notion of _linguistic universalism_, and seeing that someone can seriously appeal to Plato's version of it in the 21st century reminds one that its opposite, namely _extreme __linguistic relativism_, wasn't such a bad idea after all.


Apollodorus said:


> 5. The fact that a Greek word is "almost certainly pre-Hellenic" doesn't mean that it isn't a word that has been used in the Greek language for thousands of years and that it isn't a Greek word.


Who would argue with that? What's I'm arguing against is the idea that a word accumulating a number of meanings through semantic shifts, technical use coining and loan translation/semantic borrowing - in short, that _polysemy_ can be used as evidence for a grand over-arching theory of that word expressing some ineffable metaphysical consciousness that makes us what we are. If your theory explains a whole bunch of things without being scientific, it's only through divine intervention that it has a chance of turning out to be empirically true.


----------



## Apollodorus

Sobakus said:


> you're using the very achievements of Greek philosophy, today clearly pseudo-scientific and long-superceded, as a theoretical base and even as an authority to appeal to, even as you clearly realise that what you're doing is unscientific.



1. It seems to me that your diatribes are motivated by some inexplicable phobia against Greek language and culture and, in particular, against Greek philosophy and religion which you seem to be incognizant of if you are unable to distinguish between the εἶδος _eidos _of a _logos _and the _logos _itself.

2. I think most unbiased people would accept the fact that a word may occur in different forms such as (1) written word, (2) spoken word and (3) thought word. If we add (4) the psychological view that words are held within the subconscious and (5) a philosophical view according to which a word or the idea or "form" of a word is held within a higher and larger consciousness, then we obtain the five levels described in my illustration.

Alternatively, if you believe that Platonism is "long-superceded" then I hope you will at least accept that "the Word of God" is a current concept held by millions of Christians including Greek-speaking ones for which "Logos tou Theou" or "Word of God" is part of their language and culture.

3. If you are commenting on other members' posts then at least you should have the decency not to deliberately misinterpret their statements.

For example, "word expressing some ineffable metaphysical consciousness that makes us what we are" is _your statement_, not mine.

What I actually said was this:

*"Religion, philosophy, logic and psychology are important elements of our culture as are ethics and law. The word “word” is the link that unites them all into what we call “culture” and “civilisation”, i.e., that which makes us what we are"*

What I obviously meant by this is that words represent the link that unites religion, philosophy, logic, ethics and law into the culture and civilisation which makes us what we are. Otherwise put, all those fields of human knowledge use words which illustrates the importance of words and, by implication, of the word "word" itself.

4. The term "unscientific" was used by @sotos in his statement "This may be "unscientific" but I think it does make sense". 

By "unscientific" I meant nothing more than "not strictly or exactly scientific". Etymology itself is not an exact science. But the fact that an analysis is not exact science does not render it irrational or invalid. Besides, I wasn't "explaining" anything, I was merely logically arranging the different levels of meaning of the word "word" whose occurrence is supported by historical records. This may not apply to all languages, indeed there may be languages that do not use words, but it does apply to others.

5. As already stated, when discussing the etymology of a word, we normally state the origin of that word and the various meanings it has acquired across time and space, which is exactly what dictionaries and lexicons do. This may go against your preferred interpretations of facts but changes nothing about the facts themselves.


----------



## Sobakus

Apollodorus said:


> 1. It seems to me that your diatribes are motivated by some inexplicable phobia against Greek language and culture and, in particular, against Greek philosophy and religion which you seem to be incognizant of if you are unable to distinguish between the εἶδος _eidos _of a _logos _and the _logos _itself.


I have a rational phobia towards the kind of obfuscationism that was in principle rejected already two and a half millenia ago, and towards unscientific thinking on a forum dedicated to linguistics. And as I think is evident at this point, it's precisely you who are failing to distinguish between a whole bunch of different concepts, even across different languages, and not because you're unable to - I fully admit that I'm a dilettante in Ancient Greek anything -  but it seems because you're espousing a view of the world where lack of clarity is a virtue.


Apollodorus said:


> 2. I think most unbiased people would accept the fact that a word may occur in different forms such as (1) written word, (2) spoken word and (3) thought word. If we add (4) the psychological view that words are held within the subconscious and (5) a philosophical view according to which a word or the idea or "form" of a word is held within a higher and larger consciousness, then we obtain the five levels described in my illustration.


I think most unbiased people would accept the first four as correctly representing _the use of the word "word" in the English language_ - here's a short presentation on the problem of defining this term in modern linguistics, and here's a deeper dive into psycholinguistics - but as think I've explained sufficiently, (5) is pseudo-scientific gobbledy-gook that absolutely no scientifically literate person could have logically concluded today any more than concluding that COVID-19 is caused by _bad air_, but stems from an irrational belief rooted in the logical fallacy of false generalisation, an intuition that since we talk and speak this way, everybody else on Earth also does. This is absolutely trivially obvious.


Apollodorus said:


> Alternatively, if you believe that Platonism is "long-superceded" then I hope you will at least accept that "the Word of God" is a current concept held by millions of Christians including Greek-speaking ones for which "Logos tou Theou" or "Word of God" is part of their language and culture.


Zillions of irrational concepts are currently held by 7.674 billion people - these are informally called by the word "belief" (not to be confused with the notion of a _rationally held belief_). Irrationally held beliefs have no place in a scientifically-minded discussion - their best use is to be logically scrutinized by their holder. Current beliefs that may resemble ancient beliefs often turn out to be so only on the surface, and this concerns Christianity very directly (see _belief in belief)_. Extrapolating modern beliefs, or personally-held beliefs of any kind onto a different culture or time period is such an obvious reasoning fallacy and scientific faux pas that I can scarecely believe this needs to be written. This awareness is practically built into the post-modern critical worldview. Here's a paper by Henry (2004) (available at SciHub) that argues rather convincingly that the concept of God imposing laws on inanimate objects emerged primarly with Descartes in order to underwrite his ground-breaking notion of laws of nature.


Apollodorus said:


> 3. If you are commenting on other members' posts then at least you should have the decency not to deliberately misinterpret their statements.


I'm doing my best not to misinterpret your statements; the trouble is that, as I see it, you're doing your best to verbally obfuscate your thoughts. If any argument was required against using 2600 year old philosophical gobbledy-gook in a scientifically-minded discussion, this would do the trick.


Apollodorus said:


> For example, "word expressing some ineffable metaphysical consciousness that makes us what we are" is _your statement_, not mine.


That was an attempt to unite a number of your statements into a single one, and it's not obvious to me that it isn't a good encapsulation of your ideas.


Apollodorus said:


> What I actually said was this:
> 
> *"Religion, philosophy, logic and psychology are important elements of our culture as are ethics and law. The word “word” is the link that unites them all into what we call “culture” and “civilisation”, i.e., that which makes us what we are"*
> 
> What I obviously meant by this is that words represent the link that unites religion, philosophy, logic, ethics and law into the culture and civilisation which makes us what we are. Otherwise put, all those fields of human knowledge use words which illustrates the importance of words and, by implication, of the word "word" itself.


You continue talking about "the word "word"", which is an English word, while you started out attempting to illustrate the semantic range and development of the Greek word λόγος. I do not reject the idea that the latter word could be demonstrated to have the range of meanings you want to attribute to it and thus serve as such a link; I reject the way you're trying to demonstrate it.

And if you want to demonstrate that _words,_ i.e. human speech, serve as mediators of culture, just stating this will normally be enough because it's common sense and nobody could possibly doubt it. Your conclusion being common sense does not automatically make the reasoning you adduce for reaching it valid; in fact it means that in all likelyhood, you started with the conclusion in the first place, meaning that your reasoning serves a different purpose, for example to propound a view of the world that would have been considered irrational and obscurantist even by the very same people whose authority you adduce to justify it; or to make a point about your beliefs as a social move.


Apollodorus said:


> 4. The term "unscientific" was used by @sotos in his statement "This may be "unscientific" but I think it does make sense".
> 
> By "unscientific" I meant nothing more than "not strictly or exactly scientific". Etymology itself is not an exact science. But the fact that an analysis is not exact science does not render it irrational or invalid. Besides, I wasn't "explaining" anything, I was merely logically arranging the different levels of meaning of the word "word" whose occurrence is supported by historical records. This may not apply to all languages, indeed there may be languages that do not use words, but it does apply to others.


I'm quite sure that by "unscientific" we both mean that:


Apollodorus said:


> Hence my logically sound suggestion that the term "word" in any language may be said to have four or five distinct levels of meaning. This may or may not be "scientific" _stricto sensu _but it is based on recorded usage and on rational analysis not irrational speculation.


is completely illogical, irrational and has nothing to do with the science - an inexact science by necessity, but a science nevertheless - of etymology. The first sentence of the above statement is patently false: there is no such thing as _the term "word" in any language_, and the meanings a roughly corresponding concept may have in any language is specific to that particular language. Adducing a 2600 year old thinker grapsing in the dark for truth as authority does not change this fact.

To repeat myself yet again - there exist ways to talk of cross-linguistic or even non-linguistic concepts in a scientifically valid way. There are fields of research that deal with these matters. If you really were interested in talking about this, you would have at the very least found a way to do it without having to resort to reducing the issue to a primordial cognitive soup and citing a 2600 year old precedent as a justification for your unscientific thinking.



Apollodorus said:


> 5. As already stated, when discussing the etymology of a word, we normally state the origin of that word and the various meanings it has acquired across time and space, which is exactly what dictionaries and lexicons do. This may go against your preferred interpretations of facts but changes nothing about the facts themselves.


Why would you think I have an issue with doing this, when I've not only advocated this but have done so myself right here?


Sobakus said:


> As far as I can see, the only relevant semantic development of the Greek word is "a gathering, collection" (as in Latin) > "an account, reckoning" > "a deliberation" > "an arguing, reasoning out loud" > "a thought, opinion verbally expressed", and hence seemingly splitting into "a law, principle" and "an utterance, expression, phrase", including single-word expressions, albeit exceptionally it seems. The rest of the uses you mention seem to be technical philosophical jargon derived metaphorically from one of these meanings.


This is etymology as I understand it (and I have reasons to believe I understand it well). And if this was what you had been doing as well, we wouldn't be having this exchange.


----------

