Original Public Meaning

Our future goals—for our career, for our physical fitness, for anything—are our "aspirations." This word, which literally means "a breathing toward," has an murky connection with its dominant modern meaning of a "desire for our future." These tenuous links still can still help us appreciate the notion of aspiration as it appears in Ralph Waldo Emerson's The Method of Nature , his 1841 meditation o...

The word "utopia" was invented in 1516 by Sir Thomas More for his book of the same name. But a utopia seems to draw from two separate Greek notions: a "non-existent place" and a "good place." In today's episode, we consider the confused origins of "utopia," and we consider the word's appearance in the novel Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Sug...

When someone is a "patient," that person is, in one sense, weakened by an affliction but also, in another, powerfully enduring it. There's a paradox behind the idea of "patience," and in this episode we consider how this English word confronts this very tension. Finally, we consider a brief poem by the reclusive author Emily Dickinson, whose bracing images remind us that strength can sometimes hid...

In our previous episode, we considered how the Greek vocabulary for "feeling" developed into our contemporary language of "aesthetics." Today, we look at the similar terminology of "sensing" in Latin, which eventually evolved into the English word "sentiment." Interestingly, these similar ancient terms become rather different ideas in English. As a reflection on the roots of our own sentiments, we...

Ancient philosophical thought retains an enormous influence on our own contemporary worldview. Today's word—"aesthetic"—draws from that very tradition. We might think of "aesthetics" as a branch of philosophy concerned with the evaluation of art, and even more fundamentally, the word itself raises important questions about what we know anything and how we can know it. To help us think through thes...

The Greeks and Romans have left behind so much: not just literature, but roads, vases, statues, and buildings. In today's episode, we use this "material culture" of the ancient world as an entry point for thinking about the word "opulent," which itself draws on a multiple words from Latin. To think through the notion of opulence, both ancient and modern, we consider a passage from Joan Didion's se...

Pyramids are part of global architectural culture. We find pyramid-like structures in Egypt, Mexico, and in many other places. But the word "pyramid" itself comes from Ancient Greek—or perhaps it does. The etymology of "pyramid" is a bit of an unsolved linguistic riddle, and in today's episode we consider some possible origins. We also look to a famous passage from Horace, the poet of Augustan Rom...

We all plan for the future we want, even knowing that the best laid plans of mice and men can go awry. When we try to look ahead and make the best choices, we exercise a kind of "providence," at least according to the etymological roots of this word. In today's episode, we consider the notion of providence and its close relation to "prudence." We also look to John Milton's Paradise Lost , whose fi...

We might think of grubs hidden under a rock when we hear the word "larva" today. The word comes from Latin, but at least originally, it doesn't mean "insect"—rather, it means "ghost." Today we consider the strange development of biological terms while also revisiting a famous ghost story in a comedic and somewhat bizarre novel from the Roman world, Petronius's Satyricon . Suggest a word for a futu...

The word "panoply" today might denote a magnificent or pompous display, but its roots lie in the armor of ancient Greek soldiers. In today's episode, we consider some military terminology from the ancient world, tracing its early influence on the Greek New Testament. After consulting an episode from the Histories of Herodotus, too, we touch on one of the longstanding concerns of ancient political...

Latin and Greek have their own words for love and attraction— amor and eros , for instance—but these words don't serve as the root of our word "romance." Instead, "romance" comes from the very name of the Latin-speaking people, the Romans. How does the name for a population come to mean something about affection? We consider Jane Austen's Persuasion to help us track the meaning of "romance" from i...

The most famous nostos —or "homeward journey"—in Greco-Roman literature is the arduous trip Odysseus makes after the Trojan War, as told in Homer's Odyssey . The longing for such a return forms the root of our word "nostalgia," first used in the seventeenth century. Today we look at how this original notion of nostalgia as "homesickness" morphed into our modern use of the word as a longing for the...

The common Latin verb legere has an astonishing range of meaning: to pick up, to read, to overhear, to track someone's footsteps. When negated, this verb develops into the modern English "neglect" as well as related words like "negligent" and "negligence." In today's episode, we also consider the stylistic principle of "diligent negligence" (or perhaps "careful nonchalance") from the Roman statesm...

The word "island" itself has Germanic, rather than Greco-Roman, roots. But the Latin word insula —which also means "island"—generates several English words, including "insulate" and "insular." After considering some of these English derivatives, we turn to Herman Melville's Moby Dick , a novel that uses the image of an insular landmass to illustrate the very mystery of human existence. Suggest a w...

Words for modern technology—computer, electricity, and so on—often draw from ancient vocabulary to describe novel objects and phenomena. Such is the case for "incandescent," which first appeared in the eighteenth century in a report about combustible fuels. As we see in the contemporary novel Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, this word's application ultimately extends well beyond the filament of a lig...

Like many of our words, "ramify" borrows its meaning from the natural world—in this case, from the complex branches of a tree. Today, we use "ramify" and "ramifications" to discuss all kinds of matters, not just trees, such as the future consequences of important historical events. In this episode, we explore the broadest ramifications taking place over millions of years in Charles Darwin's 1859 t...

The etymology of "convention" is simple enough—it means a "coming together," combining the Latin roots for "together" and "to come." But how does this idea of a physical meeting develop into our idea of customary practices and social norms? We look at a brilliant passage from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America for clarification. Suggest a word for a future episode or support this podcast...

The word ectoplasm, for people of a particular age, will undoubtedly bring the Ghostbusters franchise to mind. But the word has a longer history, stretching from its ancient Greek roots to modern spiritual quackery. Here, we look to Arthur Conan Doyle and Ralph Ellison for understanding what it means to be invisible or real, fabricated or true. Suggest a word for a future episode or support this p...

A quip is a little, witty remark, but it's also a bit of Latin that has sneaked into English. In today's episode, we consider all those qu- words in Latin like quis and quae to help understand the underlying meaning of "quip." We look, too, at the opening of Vergil's Aeneid for an example of a quip hiding in plain sight. Suggest a word for a future episode or support this podcast at https://www.bu...

If someone can be "untrammeled," can they also just be "trammeled"? And what does it mean to "trammel" something in the first place? Today we look at a word whose negative form dominates its usage. After uncovering the roots of "untrammeled" in fishing traps, we turn to human biology and the biography of the Roman Emperor Claudius to consider how people have found themselves caught up in nets. Sug...

Hypocrisy is a moral failing we find in deceitful, duplicitous people. But this word—which originally comes from a Greek verb that simply means "to reply"—wasn't always associated with deception or compromised principles. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus and the novelist George Eliot give us literary examples to consider how our notion of hypocrisy came to us today. Suggest a word for a future epis...

We negotiate with friends and rivals alike in the modern world: at the dinner table, in the workplace, and among relatives. The notion of "negotiating," however, has its roots in ancient Latin vocabulary—chiefly, in the noun negotium . In this episode, we consider how Romans understood work and leisure, and we look to Shakespeare to see how this ancient idea evolved in later English literature. Su...

To kick off this podcast, we're starting with the word "principal," whose close relative "principle" can trip up even native English speakers. These two words—even if they have some shared history—aren't interchangeable. In this first episode, we turn to Isaac Newton and the King James Bible for help. Suggest a word for a future episode or support this podcast at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/words...