non-coincidences in language?

Post Reply New Topic

in the english language "good" and "God" are one letter off, "good bye" is from the old english for "God bless"

In greek grace "charis" (i am romanizing because i don't have my symbols opened) is the root of joy "chara"

and i am sure that everyone has heared of "es te viritas" (what is truth?)

Good Bye is a munging of "God Be With You" and So Long is a munging of sa'alam or shalom. There are many instances of words exchanged by different nation and cultures. For example synagogue is a Greek word for learning together and was picked up by Hebrew and Aramaic writers when they composed the Mishna Torah. There are lots of Greek origin words in the Mishnah. For example a hermophodite is referred to as androginos (in the Aramaic of the Mishnah). Words are frequently and readily exchanged between languages and cultures. That is how we got our words like alcohol, azmuth, atom etc. All from Greek.

ruveyn

I believe alcohol and azimuth came from Arabic.

God / Good
Devil / Evil

Non-coindence?

Not if you regard the entire universe as English speaking.

Quite so. My blunder.

ruveyn

Does the entire universe speak Arabic or Greek?

If you like to play with words, the reverse of evil is live and the reverse of God is dog. Do you find that significant?

Kinda.

But I didn't start this thread.

Coincidence. If you gather enough words together in a pile you can find dozens, nay, hundred of such coincidences.

ruveyn

Yeah, like one of those word-search puzzles or reading the first word in every sentence down the margin of a page.

Doesnt really work in French

Dieu/bon (God/good)

diable/mal (devil/evil)

Actually, it is "Quid est veritas?" meaning "What is truth?".

"Es te viritas" would be, -> Es (are you) te (you, singular, dative/accusative/ablative) viritas (strength??).

Also, the word "very" in English comes from "veritas" and is similar to "vero" which is how "yes" is said in Latin.

whoops, good catch. no wonder i couldn't find it in a google search. i'll change it.

while the point is in the vulgate bible, "what is truth" is an anigram for "it is the man that stands before you" this is regarding the Trial of Jesus.

There's a lot of folk etymology touted around in religion, as in other places.

The word God apparently comes from a proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to invoke' or 'to offer sacrifice', whereas good comes from a root of about the same age meaning 'fitting, pleasing, belonging together'. It's often claimed that they're related, and certainly in goodbye one has been corrupted into the other, but the connection is spurious.

Devil is interesting: from the Greek diabolos, which literally means 'to throw across' but has the general meaning of 'to slander'. Satan comes from hebrew ha-Satan, 'the accuser'. The original function of Satan, as a being who torments humans to test their faith at the direct command of God (not a very comfortable idea for later writers!), is pretty clear from the book of Job, the oldest book in the OT.

There are a couple of other interesting 'word origins' I like. The fruit of the garden of Eden, which is not named in Genesis, is in art and popular culture generally assumed to be an apple. This is because medieval scholars thought there was a connection between the Latin words malum, evil, and malus, apple.

And, in the Malleus Maleficarum of 1487 - a German handbook for witch-hunters, which had a total obsession with the evilness and depravity of women - the Latin word for woman, femina, was nonsensically supposed to be derived from fe, faith, and minus, less, because women of course had less faith than men.