Category Archives: Etymology

Principle

Etymology, Kabbalah

The metaphysical use of the word principle has been unclear to me. So I went to etymonline and learned:

Principle – late 14c., “origin, source, beginning” (a sense now obsolete), also “rule of conduct; axiom, basic assumption; elemental aspect of a craft or discipline,” from Anglo-French principle, Old French principe “origin, cause, principle,” from Latin principium (plural principia) “a beginning, commencement, origin, first part,” in plural “foundation, elements,” from princeps (genitive principis) “first man, chief leader; ruler, sovereign,” noun use of adjective meaning “that takes first,” from primus “first” (see prime (adj.)) + root of capere “to take” (from PIE root *kap– “to grasp”).

primus “first” (see prime (adj.)) + root of capere “to take”.

Capere, again! The root of conception/conceive/concept, perception/perceive/percept, reception/receive____. . .

First-take, preceding all other taking.

Principle: receptivity precedes data.

We are given only what we can take.

Back to etymonline:

Kabbalah – “Jewish mystic philosophy,” 1520s, also quabbalah, etc., from Medieval Latin cabbala, from Mishnaic Hebrew qabbalah “reception, received lore, tradition,” especially “tradition of mystical interpretation of the Old Testament,” from qibbel “to receive, admit, accept.” Compare Arabic qabala “he received, accepted.” Hence “any secret or esoteric science.”

Kabbalah is learning to take what may be given — and given only if we cultivate capacity to receive.

Techne + logos

Design, Etymology, Metaphysics, Philosophy

Etymologically, technology implies service-dominant logic!

techne- — craft.

-logy — speak, tell.

Technology is the explicit tip of craft. Technology is explicit know-how.

Originally, technology was not the product of explicit know-how, but rather, the system of explicit know-how that enables production.

In that intellectual deformation Heidegger called technik/technicity, the industrial faith of engineering, all relations are frozen into commodifiable things.

And no, Marxists, this is not capitalism. Or not only capitalism; it is you, too. Your own ideology is dominated by technik, which is why wherever you overthrow capitalism you replace it with something even more industrial and soulless.

This problem is deeper than economy, deeper than the question of who owns and controls the means of production, deeper than our methods of production. It cuts all the way down into how we conceive materials, how we approach them, how we relate to them.

Marxists turned the contents of Hegel’s idealism upside-down, without ever inverting his idealist metaphysic. The content was churned inside the unmoving container of mind, which remained, as it always does in such ideologies, “its own place”. It is an idealist metaphysics that thinks its thoughts about matter and thinks all this thinking gives it the object of its thought.

Such “materialism” never receives the blessing of material’s apeironic smile. “Typical man,” she says, “always confusing your ideas about me with me.“

Know thyselves

Enworldment, Etymology, Existentialism, Philosophy

“Know thyself,” Apollo commands.

Okay. But how? And which “thyself”? — for there is more than one. Two roads diverge before us: the path of self-consciousness and the path of self-awareness

Most take the path of self-consciousness, which tries to know the self objectively. One’s self is taken as an object of knowledge. We call it “reflecting on ourselves”. We look into the mirror, and we are absorbed in the image we see there. We identify with it.

But we can also take the path of self-awareness, and take ourselves as subject, the subjectivity to whom objective data is given, including our objective third-person self.

But self-awareness includes an insight that we are given only what we know how to take, and that changing our way of taking  can change our givens.

We can experiment with our taking (our receptivity) and see how observing from various angles or focusing on various aspects changes our objectivity. Or we can experiment with our conceptivity by asking different questions about what seems objectively true to us. Or we can experiment with our selfhood by participating in new realities, physical and/or otherwise.

What we take “self” to mean makes all the difference in who we are, and who we may become.

Etymological cheat sheet:

  • Conceive = together-take
  • Perceive = thoroughly-take
  • Receive = back-take
  • Data = given

 

Actant systems

ANT, Design, Etymology

Design develops actant systems. Polycentric design disciplines (including service design) are optimized to integrate multiple interacting human actants into the actant systems they develop. In contrast, monocentric design disciplines were optimized for a single human actant.

One exciting aspect of seeing design this way is purely etymological. Human actants in a design system are designated defined roles in the system. They are, as such designees. In design we designate roles both to people and to engineered sub-systems as actants within our systems. Cool!

Sincere, genuine, authentic, earnest

Etymology, Philosophy

sincere (adj.) — 1530s, “pure, unmixed, unadulterated;” also “free from pretense or falsehood,” from French sincere (16c.), from Latin sincerus, of things, “whole, clean, pure, uninjured, unmixed,” figuratively “sound, genuine, pure, true, candid, truthful” (unadulterated by deceit)

genuine (adj.) — “natural, not acquired,” from Latin genuinus “native, natural, innate,” from root of gignere “to beget, produce”

authentic (adj.) — “authoritative, duly authorized” (a sense now obsolete), from Old French autentique “authentic; canonical” (13c., Modern French authentique) and directly from Medieval Latin authenticus, from Greek authentikos “original, genuine, principal,” from authentes “one acting on one’s own authority,” from autos “self” (see auto-) + hentes “doer, being”

earnest (adj.) — “serious or grave in speech or action,” early 14c., ernest, from Old English eornoste (adj.) “zealous, serious,” or from Old English noun eornost “seriousness, serious intent” (surviving only in the phrase in earnest), from Proto-Germanic er-n-os-ti- (source also of Old Saxon ernust, Old Frisian ernst, Old High German arnust “seriousness, firmness, struggle,” German Ernst “seriousness;” Gothic arniba “safely, securely;” Old Norse ern “able, vigorous,” jarna “fight, combat”), perhaps from PIE root er– “to move, set in motion.”

Defining eversals

Etymology, Metaphysics, Philosophy

Two common words I use in a very precise, but unusual sense, are apprehension and surprise. What I mean by them is clearer when they are defined against their opposites.

I define apprehension against comprehension. Where comprehension provides a convex form around which one can cognitively grasp (com- “together” + -prehend “hold”) a concept (con- “together” + -cept “together”), apprehension defies grasp (ap- “toward” + -prehend “hold” despite the fact that cognition can feel the reality of what remains ungraspable. It is analogous to touching the inner surface of a concave surface with one’s fingertips, feeling for nonexistent edges around which one can secure a grip. Apprehending but not comprehending makes us aware of a boundary between comprehensibility and (as yet) incomprehensible reality, and this awareness induces apprehension, anxiety in the face of an inconceivable beyond. The relationship is that of eversion, of flipping inside out. Apprehension is everted comprehension.

I define surprise against comprise. When we comprehend something objectively the contents of the comprehension is all the beliefs the understanding comprises (and if you are a pragmatist, all the implications of these beliefs). (“-prise” and “-prehend” are both forms of the same Latin root, “-prehendere“, “to hold”.) Surprise is that which is not comprehended which surrounds the comprehension with what was not grasped, due to its being beyond or over what is held, (sur- “beyond”/”over” + -prise “hold”), and which therefore is in a position to irrupt into what was comprehended and potentially to disrupt it. Here, also, is a relationship of eversion. It resembles the old “Russian reversal” joke: in Soviet Russia surprise comprises you.

Both of these words reflect a basic topological structure of my conceptions of subjectivity and objectivity. That is, they are eversions of one another. Every subjectivity comprises an objectivity derived from its interactions with its environing reality. But on the other side of these interactions, transcendent to its subjectivity and objectivity is a fellow subjectivity with an objectivity of its own which will both harmonize with and clash against the objectivity of other subjectivities. To make matters more complex, to the degree subjectivities manage to harmonize and share objectivity they form new, more expansive subjectivities. I participates within a transcendent We, without experiencing the kind of apprehension or surprise that signals transcendent otherness, radical alterity.

Without this subjective-objective topology, my ideas can only be partially comprehended — and largely only apprehended.

I think my next book will need to be another chapbook, I’ve been calling “the pearl book”. It might also be called Everso, every possible pun intended.

Fake etymologies

Enworldment, Etymology, Philosophy

In Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Rorty repeatedly busts Heidegger for inventing fake etymologies. The accusation extends beyond the incorrectness of the claims — the very impulse to excavate more primordial and immediate meanings is impugned.

This is fascinating to me because I wholeheartedly share Heidegger’s love of etymologies, and Heidegger is a nasty enough son-of-a-bitch that if I agree with him on anything, I feel a strong need to lab-test, analyze and inspect that agreement very closely.

Of course, as I’ve said many times over the years, it only takes a trace of poison to turn something wholesome lethal, so I am unwilling to reject everything an evil genius says, just because it was said by an evil genius. In fact, that wholesale impulse is one of the more toxic substances I see in the poisoned minds around me. But that doesn’t mean I’m ingesting anything Heidegger says casually.

(If you can’t tell, I understand evil to be a function of one’s philosophy. I see evil as a kind of philosophical disease, not as an essential characteristic of any soul. Evil is curable. The treatment is metanoia. Metanoia, like many treatments, tastes nasty on the tongue. But so do many toxins, so how do we discern?)

For the record, I see the toxicity of Heidegger primarily in his hubristic concept of the They, which obligated him to despise everyone but his own hand-selected authorities. I ate this poison years ago, and it caused me some very serious and pleasurable problems, before I managed to expel it.

I’m also worried about another idea, espoused in both Heidegger and fellow Nazi and mystic, Eugen Herrigel, author of Zen in the Art of Archery, one that is even more important to me than etymologophelia, the ideal of tacit use and ontic fusion (my term) with equipment and environment. Heidegger called it ready-to-hand, and argued that this tacit ready-to-hand being, where a tool, such as a hammer, and a whole working environment, such as a workshop, becomes an organic extension of one’s own activity and one’s own being (as opposed to discrete objects which stand apart from us present-at-hand, which is an exceptional state caused by malfunction or a conscious effort to observe. This idea of ontic fusion is both profoundly important to me as a designer and a prime suspect in my ongoing investigation of totalitarian ideologies. My suspicion is that this desire to fuse with our worlds easily metastasizes into a desire to take ourselves — the bundle of intuitions that constitute our soul — into the soul of the world itself.

Is there a way to wordlessly fuse with our own world, while maintaining a pluralistic attitude toward reality, and especially toward those ornery bits of the world we call our neighbors? That’s one of the core problems in my next book.

Apprehension

Biography, Etymology

I had a eureka moment earlier today. I should use the word “apprehension” instead of angst, anxiety or perplexity. The word is etymologically perfect, derived from from ad- ‘towards’ + prehendere ‘lay hold of’. It is what we feel prior to comprehension, com- ‘together’ + prehendere ‘lay hold of’. It is what we experience before we can say “hence…” and well before the idea is ready to hand. (Sadly, “hence”is less etymologically cooperative, having nothing at all to do with –hendere. And the word “hand” also refuses to play the -hendere game I want it to.) Then I thought “huh, that was too easy. Is this something I thought before — maybe even recently? I need to put these idea out before my memory is completely gone.

I do sort of want to write a chapbook called Apprehension now, though. I also need to do one called Eversion. I need a damn printing press.

Mutual mutation

Etymology, Philosophy

Mutual, mutable, mutate and mutant are all derived from the same Latin root, mutare, to change.

Mutual comes from Middle French mutuel, from Latin mutuus — lent, borrowed. Mutable, from Middle English, from Latin mutabilis.

Why should anyone care about this etymological bit of trivia? For me, the profoundest value of entering a relationship of mutuality — of that sacred acknowledgment of thou, of namaste, of the gassho gesture — is its transformative power, which is the most powerful demonstration that otherness is transcendent, real, relevant and radically surprising.

Speaking of etymologies, surprise has a surprising etymology: sur, super + prise, take, derived from prendre. Prendre is also the root of comprise and comprehend, to together-take. Surprise is the eversion (the flipping inside-out) of comprise — to be taken by what is super, beyond, above.

To remain alert to what always transcends any particular comprehension is a kind of everted comprehension that complements every comprehension with expectation of potentially disruptive always-more — I want to call that suprehension.

Comprise : surprise :: comprehend : suprehend

Suprehension is a vectoral state of awareness toward a permanent possibility of radical shock, a something that will change everything, which is the prize of mutuality.

Suprehension is fallibilism, but intensified, charged with positive value and religious significance.

Suprehension is knowledge placed in the context of infinity as qualitative fact.

(Infinity as qualitative fact means infinity produces novel categories that have never before produced instances. And only instances of categories are countable.)

Videre

Etymology

Several years ago, I did an etymology post on specere words. Here is Part Two, another species of seeing/envisioning words, a branch derived from videre.

Vision – ORIGIN Middle English (denoting a supernatural apparition): via Old French from Latin visio(n-), from videre ‘to see.’

Visual – ORIGIN late Middle English (originally describing a beam imagined to proceed from the eye and make vision possible): from late Latin visualis, from Latin visus ‘sight,’ from videre ‘to see.’

Advise – ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French aviser, based on Latin ad– ‘to’ + visere, frequentative of videre ‘to see.’ The original senses included ‘look at’ and ‘consider,’ hence ‘consider jointly, consult with others.’

Wisdom – ORIGIN Old English wis, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch wijs and German weise, also to wit…

Wit – ORIGIN Old English witan, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch weten and German wissen, from an Indo-European root shared by Sanskrit veda ‘knowledge’ and Latin videre ‘see.’

 

Evert

Etymology

Announcing an exciting new vocabulary acquisition: evert. I have needed this word many times, but had to resort to flipping, reversing, inverting, turning… inside-out.

Evert – verb [ with obj. ]
Turn (a structure or organ) outward or inside out: (as adj. everted) : the characteristic facial appearance of full, often everted lips.
DERIVATIVES
eversible – adjective.
eversion –  noun
ORIGIN mid 16th cent. (in the sense ‘upset, overthrow’): from Latin evertere, from e- (variant of ex-) ‘out’ + vertere ‘to turn.’

Now I can say things like:

  • Everything in the world is the world everted.
  • A comedy is an everted tragedy. A tragedy is an everted comedy.
  • A pearl is an everted oyster shell. An oyster coats the ocean with mother-of-pearl. Outside the shell is ocean, inside the pearl is ocean. Between inner-shell and outer-pearl is slimy oyster-flesh, which ceaselessly coats everything it isn’t with mother-of-pearl. It is as if the flesh cannot stand anything that does not have a smooth, continuous and lustrous surface. We could call the flesh’s Other — that which requires coating — “father-of-pearl”.
  • Imagine Pandora’s box as a pearl everting to an all-ensconcing shell as Pandora opened it, and Eden as an all-ensconcing shell everted to a pearl upon Adam’s eviction.
  • An object is an everted subject.

Circuits

ANT, Etymology, Philosophy

Intersubjectivity is conducted through the medium of things.

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I and You runs a circuit through It.

Are things otherwise?: I is short-circuiting, again.

An indicator of a closed circuit: intense heat.

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Circuit – ORIGIN late Middle English: via Old French from Latin circuitus, from circuire, variant of circumire ‘go around,’ from circum ‘around’ + ire ‘go.’

(It is interesting to think of the circuit as primarily the movement, not the substance that enables the movement.)

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Laurie Anderson’s “Closed Circuit”

 

Design rhapsody

Design, Etymology

To design — to “de-” apart + “-sign” t0 seal or mark…

— to set a thing apart and and assign it a significance…

— to define the boundaries of some reality, to extract it from the surrounding chaos and to let its reality stand in the foreground against a background, and to let it be for itself and for us…

— to separate parts within a whole, give them joints, in such a way that a sequential encounter of part-by-part allows the whole to emerge spontaneously like the meaning of a sentence emerges word-by-word without need of grammatical analysis — that is, to articulate in every sense of the word…

— to invite things to participate in human life, to embrace their inhumanity by allowing them to speak in the conversation of craft, to learn the full truth of their existence so they collaborate with us to embody a significance…

— to designify, assign designificance, apart and special.

It is good to design, and this is a good time to be a designer.

)O+

Gives me pause

Etymology

This post poses a question regarding the relationship between posing and positing. It is interesting to me that we pose questions, but posit assertions. Situations can pose problems. We keep people posted on what is happening, particularly about these problematic situations.

It appears that this family of words revolves around two centers of gravity, split from an original root, “ponere“, translated as ‘to place’ or ‘to show off.’ pausare ‘to pause’ and Latin positura ‘position,’ from posit– ‘placed’, almost a complementary negative/positive pair, with pausare being a momentary cessation of movement — a stop-motion or freeze-frame for catching a whirling problem in the act of being problematic — and positura being a positive movement of putting a thing forth.

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An eymological exposition of ponere words:

Pose – ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French poser (verb), from late Latin pausare ‘to pause,’ which replaced Latin ponere ‘to show off.’ The noun dates from the early 19th cent.

Posit – ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from Latin posit– ‘placed,’ from the verb ponere.

Position – ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French, from Latin positio(n-), from ponere ‘to place.’ The current sense of the verb dates from the early 19th cent.

Posture – ORIGIN late 16th cent. (denoting the relative position of one thing to another): from French, from Italian postura, from Latin positura ‘position,’ from posit– ‘placed,’ from the verb ponere .

Suppose – ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French supposer, from Latin supponere (from sub– ‘from below’ + ponere ‘to place’), but influenced by Latin suppositus ‘set under’ and Old French poser ‘to place.’

Impose – ORIGIN late 15th cent. (in the sense ‘impute’): from French imposer, from Latin imponere ‘inflict, deceive’ (from in– ‘in, upon’ + ponere ‘put’), but influenced by impositus ‘inflicted’ and Old French poser ‘to place.’

Expose – ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French exposer, from Latin exponere (see expound), but influenced by Latin expositus ‘put or set out’ and Old French poser ‘to place.’

Repose – ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French repos (noun), reposer (verb), from late Latin repausare, from re– (expressing intensive force) + pausare ‘to pause.’

Positive – ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French positif, –ive or Latin positivus, from posit– ‘placed,’ from the verb ponere. The original sense referred to laws as being formally ‘laid down,’ which gave rise to the sense ‘explicitly laid down and admitting no question,’ hence ‘very sure, convinced.’

Challenges vs. problems

Etymology

Examining the etymologies of the words, it is strange that we use the word “challenge” as a euphemism for “problem”.

Challenge: ORIGIN Middle English (in the senses ‘accusation’ and ‘accuse’): from Old French chalenge (noun), chalenger (verb), from Latin calumnia ‘calumny,’ calumniari ‘calumniate.’

Problem: ORIGIN late Middle English (originally denoting a riddle or a question for academic discussion): from Old French probleme, via Latin from Greek probl?ma, from proballein ‘put forth,’ from pro ‘before’ + ballein ‘to throw.’

Canny vs uncanny

Etymology

Uncanny – 1590s, “mischievous;” 1773 in the sense of “associated with the supernatural,” originally Scottish and northern English, from un– (1) “not” + canny.

Canny – 1630s, Scottish and northern England formation from can (v.) in its sense of “know how to;” lit. “knowing,” hence, “careful.” Often used superciliously of Scots by their southern neighbors, implying “thrift and an eye to the main chance.”

(From the Online Etymology Dictionary.)

The Oxford dictionary defines canny as “having or showing shrewdness and good judgment, especially in money or business matters” and Scottish & Northern English “pleasant; nice: ‘she’s a canny lass.'”

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I nominate uncanny/canny for the office of Most Fundamental Ontological Category. The canny represents the principle of savvy niceness; the uncanny, occult weirdness.

Centri-

Etymology

Centripetal – centripetus, from Latin centrum (see center) + –petus ‘seeking’ (from petere ‘seek’).

Centrifugal – centrifugus, from Latin centrum (see center) + –fugus ‘fleeing’ (from fugere ‘flee’).

Center – from Latin centrum, , from Greek kentron ‘sharp point, stationary point of a pair of compasses,’ related to kentein ‘to prick.’

 

Specere

Etymology

Special – ORIGIN Middle English: shortening of Old French especial ‘especial’ or Latin specialis, from species ‘appearance’; literally ‘appearance, form, beauty,’ from specere ‘to look.’

Respect – ORIGIN late Middle English: from Latin respectus, from the verb respicere ‘look back at, regard,’ from re– ‘back’ + specere ‘look at.’

Inspect – ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from Latin inspect– ‘looked into, examined,’ from the verb inspicere (from in- ‘in’ + specere ‘look at’), or from its frequentative, inspectare.

Circumspect – ORIGIN late Middle English: from Latin circumspectus, from circumspicere ‘look around,’ from circum ‘around, about’ + specere ‘look.’

Suspect – ORIGIN Middle English (originally as an adjective): from Latin suspectus ‘mistrusted,’ past participle of suspicere, from sub- ‘from below’ + specere ‘to look.’

Despise – ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French despire, from Latin despicere, from de– ‘down’ + specere ‘look at.’

Continue reading Specere →

Author etymologies

Etymology

Actor – ORIGIN late Middle English (originally denoting an agent or administrator): from Latin, ‘doer, actor,’ from agere ‘do, act.’ The theater sense dates from the 16th cent.

Author – ORIGIN Middle English (in the sense ‘a person who invents or causes something’): from Old French autor, from Latin auctor, from augere ‘increase, originate, promote.’ The spelling with th arose in the 15th cent., and perhaps became established under the influence of authentic.

Authentic – ORIGIN late Middle English: via Old French from late Latin authenticus, from Greek authentikos ‘principal, genuine.’

Authority – ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French autorite, from Latin auctoritas, from auctor ‘originator, promoter.’

Then there’s the word augur. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary:

…augur, a religious official in ancient Rome who foretold events by interpreting omens, perhaps originally meaning “an increase in crops enacted in ritual,” in which case it probably is from Old L. augos (gen. augeris) “increase,” and is related to augere “increase” (see augment). The more popular theory is that it is from L. avis “bird,” since the flights, singing, and feeding of birds, along with entrails from bird sacrifices, were important objects of divination (cf. auspicious). In that case, the second element would be from garrire “to talk.” The verb is c.1600, from the noun.

 

 

Intuitions and insights

Etymology, Ideas

Intuit: from the Latin verb intueri, from in- ‘upon’ + tueri ‘to look.’

“In-” = upon? Does that mean intuition is a synoptic sense? A superficial grok of a whole?

A question: What is the precise relationship between an intuition and an insight? Are either of these words precise enough for such a comparison?

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Jung primed me for this question: he distinguished between an introverted intuition and an extraverted intuition.