In opening, Critchley references Plato’s dialogue “Theaetetus,” suggesting that a philosopher is someone who looks “at the sky” or at things not grounded on/in earth and in doing so is unaware of the things at his feet (as Thales was when he was so intent on looking at the stars that he fell into a well). The philosopher, thus, is a joke. He adds that there are many layers in this water metaphor—one being that the water is Thales’ philosophers stone and that he therefore fell into his own philosophy.

Another aspect of the philosopher, though, is time—the ability to have time, to take time. In differentiating between the philosopher and the lawyer (the pettifogger), Socrates tells Theodorus that they are, indeed, at leisure. According to Critchley,

Socrates says that those in the constant press of business, like lawyers, policy-makers, mortgage brokers and hedge fund managers, become ‘bent and stunted’ and they are compelled ‘to do crooked things.’ The pettifogger is undoubtedly successful, wealthy and extraordinarily honey-tongued, but, Socrates adds, ’small in his soul and shrewd and a shyster.’ The philosopher, by contrast, is free by virtue of his or her otherworldliness, by their capacity to fall into wells and appear silly.

Further, the philosopher, according to Socrates, is unconcerned with the things of the polis—his body dwells within the city walls, but his thoughts are elsewhere. Ironically, of course, Crtichley reminds us that Socrates literally ran out of time in the courts and was sentenced to death, his words remaining only through the lens of Plato. So time is of the essence and is constantly in opposition to the philosopher—best friend and worst enemy.

Critchley goes on to expound on the philosopher’s role as a gadfly and as a dissenter against the gods, for “nothing is more common in the history of philosophy than the accusation of impiety.” In this way, he proposes, “perhaps the last laugh is with the philosopher;” perhaps what society finds so uncanny and dissenting in philosophy is really what is needed—after all, isn’t this why we study ancient philosophy to this day?

                          

Given this strange mash-up of events, it seems that nothing would be able to bind them together. Two words, however, can—spirit and conspiracy. What might seem obvious to some, the etymological link between the two words, came as a surprise to me, a surprise that was a little bit delightful, I’ll admit.

Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day obviously deal with matters of the spirit. Originally the Celtic celebration Samhain, meaning “summer’s end,” Halloween comes from the Old English hálgen—hallow or “holy man.” When the Catholic Church switchd the holiday from a pagan one to a Christian one, it changed the name from Samhain to All Hallows’ Even—the evening before All Hallows, or All Saints Day. As for the sprit part of Halloween, Samhain was originally a celebration of the dead, the night of Samhain being the night when the barrier between the afterworld and the world was a bit thin and spirits could pass between the two.

All Saints Day, on the other hand, celebrates the lives of the Saints, a holiday originally held on May 13 after Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the martyrs in the early 600s. The original date of May 13 replaced a pagan holiday celebrating the antiquity, but was moved, only a century later, to November 1 by Pope Gregory III in order to coincide with Samhain, now called All Hallows Eve.

All Souls Day, one day later, remembers the souls, the spirits, of those departed. Also known as the Feast of All Souls or the Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed, All Souls Day is celebrated in Spanish speaking countries as Día de los Muertos or the Day of the Dead and in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel as Yom el Maouta, the Thursday of the Dead. This particular religious holiday was established some years after Halloween and All Saints Day in 998 by St. Odilo of Cluny, and was gradually picked up by dioceses around the world. Intercession and remembrance of the dead is certainly nothing limited to the western Christian tradition, but, once again, it coincides on the calendar with the Halloween-All Saints celebrations.

Now that I’ve covered the spirit-based holidays, what about Election Day? I’m not going to say much about it except that politics and conspiracy tend to go hand-in-hand. Just think of all of the theories surrounding John F. Kennedy’s assassination, or the various internet theories that popped up after the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. Or even more literally, the Burr conspiracy at the turn of the 19th century—a little known event that I find intriguing for how little it has to do with the American government—Aaron Burr only possibly wanted to help the Mexicans overthrow the Spanish government. Burr was eventually acquitted, but the tale reigned large for years after.

So what’s the big connection between spirit and conspiracy? The root word, of course! Spirit comes from the Latin spiritus which means “breathing, breath, air.” The chief Oxford English Dictionary definition of spirit is “The animating or vital principle in man (and animals); that which gives life to the physical organism, in contrast to its purely material elements; the breath of life.” With spiritus morphed in Italian to spirito, Portuguese to espirito, and Spanish to espiritu, the English spirit comes from the Old French esperit which was adopted into English via the Anglo-French spirit (espirit), spirite.

Conspiracy, as you might have figured out by now, also comes from the Latin spiritus, via the Latin conspirare which literally means “to breathe together,” and as the OED puts it so well, “whence, ‘to accord, harmonize, agree, combine or unite in a purpose, plot mischief together secretly.’” The definition, of course, is “To combine privily for an evil or unlawful purpose; to agree together to do something criminal, illegal, or reprehensible (esp. to commit treason or murder, excite sedition, etc.); to plot.”

The thing to think about then, in this upcoming week, is breathing. In order to not become one of those departed souls remembered on All Souls Day, we need to keep breathing; in order to avoid being put on trial for treason we need to not breathe together.

                          

In southern France, Monaco, and parts of Italy and Spain, oc was used traditionally for “yes”, whereas in northern France and parts of Belgium, oďl was used. Sě was used in most of Spain, Portugal, and Italy. All three words come from Latin terms of agreement: oc originated in hoc, meaning “this,” oďl from hoc illud, meaning “this is it,” and sě from sic, meaning “thus it is.” While oc and oďl are rarely used in contemporary languages, the sě form is still utilized in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese (sim).

The Occitan language declined in usage and popularity beginning in the 14th century, around the time that French royal power – seated in northern France – extended its domain over the rest of the country. Eventually, in 1539, the langue d’oďl became the official language of French administration by a piece of legislature known as the Ordinance of Villers-Cotteręts. This document, signed by King Francis I in the northern city of Villers-Cotteręts, was the second-to-last blow for the Occitan language. The final one was the French Revolution, whose proponents emphasized unity of language, and so encouraged the use of a single French dialect. The Occitan language enjoyed a minor resurgence after World War I, in part due to the spread of Occitan speakers in France and in part due to the emergence of poets, playwrights, and authors from southern France who emphasized their cultural heritage and language.

                          

There are few things that I love more than finding out that two seemingly very different words share the same root. Like the shared history of pomegranate and hand grenade, these connections between word origins sometimes surface in decidedly non-linguistic places. Today’s strange linguistic history comes from Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. McGee’s 700 page tome of food science, history, and myth covers everything from the difference between curds and whey to the development of the French sauce families to the chemical explanation of the affect of cooking on meat pigments. It’s a wildly interesting book for any serious cook or connoisseur, but probably boring for people who don’t share that passion for food.

In his chapter on dairy, McGee discusses the various chemical and physical components of milk, cream, cheese, ice cream, and yogurt (among other products). His section on cream opens with the sentence, “The word cream comes from the Greek chriein, which means ‘to anoint,’ and which is also the root word of Christ (‘the anointed one’).” No, this isn’t a dream that Dan Brown had after falling asleep with a half-eaten pint of Ben and Jerry’s—the cream Christ connection is real. McGee goes on to explain that,

The link between ancient ritual and rich food is oil, the substance used to anoint the chosen, and the defining element of cream. Cream is a form of milk in which the fat globules have become more concentrated than usual, whether by rising to the top in a bottle or spinning off from the heavier water phase in a centrifuge.

A quick look on the Oxford English dictionary revealed a little more interesting history. The obsolete definition of cream is “the consecrated oil used in anointing” which stems from chrism, “Oil mingled with balm, consecrated for use as an unguent in the administration of certain sacraments in the Eastern and Western Churches.”

The etymology of chrism comes from the Latin chrisma and the Greek xpavua for “anointing, unction.” The feminine verb form, xpiew, “to anoint” through Latin form became cresma, from which the Old French cresme (cręme) originated. Old English directly adopted the Latin form as crisma, which then evolved in Midde English to crisme. From 1300 on, crčme (creyme, crayme, later creame, cream) was in use, but in the 16th century, French and English modified the form to include the ch for chręme and chrism and the form, cream went out of use. Cream, as we know it to mean today—as related to milk—, first appeared in the English language in the 14th century and was a popular application of cresme or chrism, with a change of gender for the French to la cręme.

As for Christ, the word’s history stems from the Latin Christ-us and the Greek xpavua—McGee was right, cream and Christ do share the same etymological history. Xpavua itself is actually a translation of the Hebrew mashiax (with lines over the “i” and the “a”), yahweh, “the Lord’s Anointed.” Subsequently the word evolved in Old Saxon and Old High German as crist and krist (also, only in Old High German, christ). In its English form, the word first appeared in 950 CE in translations of the Old Testament.

Once again I’m amazed at the richness of the English language—religion and food connected through the act of anointing. In that food and religion are, along with language, extremely important aspects of human culture, it shouldn’t be surprising. Perhaps Ben and Jerry could take note of the linguistic history when they unveil their next flavor; a suggestion: Anointed Berry Swirl.

                          

“Home” comes from the Proto-Germanic khaim, which differed from the meaning of “house” in those times as it does today. The khaim, or ham, as it traveled into Old English, meant a residence as opposed to simply a shelter. Its Proto-Indo-European root kei, meaning to lie down or settle, rendered this term more inviting and inclusive.

The word “domestic” has very old roots as well, stemming from the Greek domos, and later Latin domus, both meaning “house.” This word has the same origins as the verb “to dominate,” which originally meant to be the head of a household and, later, to be a despot or tyrant. To domesticate an animal — to tame it so that it can safely participate in the home — carries an interesting mix of the old and the modern sense, to dominate.

It’s appropriate to mention also, considering that two Americans were just awarded Nobel Prizes in Economics, that the terms “economics” and “economy” have their roots in ancient concepts of the home. Eco is a derivation of the Greek oikos, meaning an extended family unit that includes the home, land, slaves, and all animals and property. The oikos was run by the oldest male of the family, whose role it was to ensure that all components of the home were running smoothly. Thus, eco now designates a broad, self-sustained unit, as in the terms ecology, ecosystem, and economy, which still carries a bit of its original meaning: management of the home.

The parts of a house also have interesting word-origins. The word “ceiling”, for example, comes from the Latin celare, meaning to conceal, and plays off the word cćlum, meaning “heaven” or “sky.”

The origins of the word “wall” are Old Germanic passed on from the Latin vallum, indicating a military rampart or partition. New York’s Wall Street got its name because it ran along the interior defensive wall of a Dutch colonial settlement.

The word “window” is a combination of “wind” and “eye.” It stems from the Old Norse vindauga (vindr meaning “wind” and auga meaning “eye”) and replaced the Old English eagţyrl, meaning “eye-hole.”

                          

Defending their choice, the Peace Prize committee cited Obama’s efforts to create a “a world free from nuclear arms…[Obama] has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the United States is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.” NYTimes

This led me to do a little digging on the etymology of “peace.” The word is steeped in strong images and connotations, it is historically and culturally significant to all peoples in all societies. So what is in the word that brings us all to the same ideas of well-being, harmony, and quietude?

Our English word stems from the Anglo-Norman pes, peas, pees, pais and Old French pais, pes, pez. The transition from Old to Middle French brought about the spelling of paix which, in the second half of the 10th century, came to mean “tranquility in relations between two or more individuals.” By the 11th century (c. 1050) paix held relgious connotations as “state of tranquility which comes about as a result of fulfilling religious duties.” By 1100 it meant “peaceful relations between fellow citizens” and “condition of a nation or state which is not at war.” By 1200 the political and the personal were fully combined in the word and peace now included the definition of “freedom from anxiety or inner conflict.” A few years later in the 13th and 14th centuries, “truce” and “peace treaty evolved.”

At the same time as this Anglo-Norman-French strain of the word, peace also evolved from the classical Latin pax: “peace, order, security, amity, concord, tranquility, calm, stillness, pact or settlement, peace personified, goddess of peace.” By the 9th century the word had evolved to mean “protection guaranteed by the monarch to certain people” from the post-classical connotation of the kiss of peace and general enforcement of public order. Other lines can be traced to the Old Occitan paz (c1070; Occitan patz), Catalan pau (1251; earlier as paz (c1150) and pad (c1200)), Spanish paz (1207), Portuguese paz (1145), Italian pace (13th cent.).

Cursory as this etymology may be, there’s certainly a strong thread pulling together the word peace. What could mean multiple things in various countries seems to generally draw from the universal ideas of tranquility and restfulness—a country at rest, not at war or a person at rest, in tranquility, with themselves. My hope, of course, is that the Nobel committee’s announcement of Barack Obama as the Peace Prize recipient is that everyone peacefully accepts it. After all, it’s simply an award—albeit one with strong cultural and political implications. But in keeping with the nature of it, peace ought to be the only response.

                          

Monday
From the Old English Monandćg, a combination of mona, meaning “moon”, and dćg, meaning “day.” Most Romance languages use the Latin for “moon” – luna – as in the French lundi and Spanish lunes.

Tuesday
From the Old English Tiwesdćg, meaning “Tyr’s (or Tiw’s/Tew’s Day”), named after the god of war of Norse mythology. Naming the second day of the week after a war god stems from the Romans’ use of Mars for the same day, leading to, among others, the French mardi and Spanish martes.

Wednesday
From the Old English Wodnesdćg, or “Woden’s (Odin’s) Day”, named after an important Germanic and Scandinavian god. The name of this day, too, is borrowed from the Romans, who used the god Mercury for Wednesday. The French is mercredi and the Spanish is miércoles.

Thursday
From the Old English Ţurresdćg, meaning “Thor’s Day” after the Norse god of thunder. The Latin equivalent is named after Jupiter, as in the French jeudi and Spanish jueves.

Friday
From the Old English Frigedćg, named after the Anglo-Saxon goddess Frigg. It is based on the Roman goddess Venus, and used in French as vendredi and in Spanish as viernes.

Saturday
From the Old English Sćterdćg, or “Saturn’s Day,” this is the only day to have retained its Latin origins from the god of agriculture. In French it is samedi and in Spanish, sábado.

Sunday
From the Old English Sunnandćg, the day of the sun. Most Romance languages have used the Latin for “Lord’s Day”, as in the French dimanche and Spanish domingo.

                          

One of the songs that piqued my interest was an old cowboy song, “Diamantina Drove” from Australia about the drovers, the equivalent of a cowboy. The song could have been about an American cowboy, it heralded the usual tropes of cattle and open spaces and the call of the frontier, so it got me to thinking about cowboys everywhere — what are they called, what sets them apart country-to-country, when did we first start talking about cowboys etc.

Our term cowboy was first documented in the English language by 1725. A direct translation of the Spanish word vaquero, one who manages cattle from horseback, cowboy has come to mean the same thing — a man employed to take care of grazing cattle on a ranch (OED). Vaquero, of course, is rooted in the word vaca, or cow, and stems from the Latin vacca. Another English word for cowboy, buckaroo, has a debatable etymology. It is generally attributed to an Anglicizing of vaquero, but, apparently, one scholar has suggested that it possibly stems from the Arabic bakara or bakhara, meaning heifer. Other terms include cowpoke, cowhand, and cowpuncher — all originating in the mid- to late-1800s. Regionally specific, cowboy is a term common throughout the west and particularly in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, Buckaroo is used primarily in the Great Basin and California, and cowpuncher mostly in Texas and surrounding states, Wiki.

The concept of the cowboy originated in Spain, but the system of herding and managing cattle on horseback quickly spread to other areas. In Mexico, cowboys are called vaqueros in the northern regions and charros in the Jalisco and Michoacan regions. Originally, however, the cowboys were called caballeros, literally translated as gentleman and stemming from the Spanish word for horse, caballo. Caballeros were few and far between, they were the wealthy elite, and vaqueros, the independent cattlemen, certainly outnumbered the caballeros.

Vaqueros were proverbial cowboys — rough, hard-working mestizos who were hired by the criollo caballeros to drive cattle between New Mexico and Mexico City, and later between Texas and Mexico City. The title, though denoting a separate social class, is similar to caballero, and is a mark of pride.ť National Geographic.

In Argentina, Uruguay, southern Chile and the southern region of Brazil, countries characterized by the pampas, a huge grassy plain that covers more than 750,000 km, cowboys are called gauchos. Like their northern counterparts, gauchos, were more common in the 19th century when the cattle herding business was the main activity in the area, but there are still working gauchos today. Etymologically, it possibly derives from the Mapuche cauchu, or “vagabond,” or from the Quechua huachu, for “orphan.” The first use of gaucho in the Spanish language dates to the time of Argentine independence, 1816. In other parts of Chile, cowboys are sometimes called huasos, in Venezuela they are called llaneros, and in Peru they are called chalan.

Farther west in Australia are the stockmen or drovers. Stockman is the name given to any experienced individual who manages the livestock on a large property. Likewise, drover, denotes an experienced stockman. The terms jackaroo (male) and jillaroo (female) denote inexperienced stockmen or trainees. Drover traces its roots back to the noun drove, the action of driving. Drove comes from the Old English draif, which then, through two ablaut grades of drafan became drive. Interestingly, drove refers not only to an action, but also to “A number of beasts, as oxen, sheep, etc., driven in a body; a herd, flock.” As an action, drove first appeared in the English language as early as 971 CE; as referring to a flock or herd, drove appeared as early as 1121 CE. It’s not difficult to see why cowboys are drovers — not only do they drive the herd, the heard is also a drove.

Looking back to Europe, Italy claims cowboys of its own. Butteri (buttero in the singular) are found in the region of Maremma, in Tuscany in the Northern Latium and in the Pontine Marshes. Butteri herd both cattle and sheep, but like cowboys everywhere, they do so on horseback. Unfortunately most of this region is developed, so only five or six herds are still maintained by butteri. I’m not having any luck looking up the etymology, so someone correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like buttero comes from the verb buttare, to throw or to knock down. It seems logical to me, cattle driving or sheep herding definitely includes throwing down animals — think of the rodeo.

The next time I throw down an animal (which I’m not sure when I would ever do that, but I might, who knows), I’m definitely going to think of the butteri, the drovers, and the gauchos. Cowboy culture is everywhere, literally.

                          

Sabotage
The 20th-century French verb saboter, meaning to accidently or maliciously destroy, stems from an older French word, sabot, meaning “old shoe.” These old shoes were made of wood, and so made walking softly or stealthily quite difficult. To sabotage originally meant to walk noisily; later it came to mean to do something poorly, to make a mess, or to bungle something. Thus, the contemporary understanding of sabotage – to hinder, destroy, tamper with, or obscure – stems from the inability to be courteous while wearing sabots.

Maroon
Maroon as a color stems from the Greek maraon, meaning “chestnut.” Because of their rich hue, chestnuts came to be representative of the color brown and were incorporated into the Old French to mean both the color and the nut. Later, in the early 17th century, the term was used to refer to fugitive slaves in the West Indies and Dutch Guyana – both due to skin color and to the fact that those who were able to escape lived in cimarron, Spanish for a wild forest or thicket. This secondary meaning gives us the contemporary understanding of the verb “to maroon.”

Mystery
The etymology of this word is intricately intertwined with the history of theology. The ancient Greeks referred to their religious rites and doctrines as mysteria and to the people initiated into them as mystes. The root of this word, perhaps, was the verb myein, meaning to close or shut (implying that initiates were sworn to secrecy about the rites they witnessed and performed). The term found its way into the Old French via Latin, and in the early 14th century became widely used in English to mean a religious truth, divine revelation, or the mystical presence of God. This religious usage led to the secular understanding of a mystery as something unclear and difficult to grasp.

                          

Although parts of the city are in near-crisis situations, it does seem fitting to sit back and take a look at where the word flood comes from etymologically. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun as “the flowing in of the tide;” as “a body of flowing water; a river, stream, usually, a large river;” as, in a wider sense, “opposed to land, often contrasted with field and fire;” and finally as “an overflowing or irruption of a great body of water over land not usually submerged; an inundation, a deluge.” Interestingly, the first three definitions are related more to the property of water as different than land—i.e. the fact that water flows—than of an over-swelling of water, as would be our common definition today. I think I’m going to have to start using flood when I’m referencing a river in general, just to switch things up a bit.

So our modern flood hails from a Teutonic background with the Old English flód predating the current spelling. Flod stems from the Old Frisian and Old Swedish flôd. Old Frisian is a West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries in the area between the Rhine and Elbe on the European North Sea coast. The Middle Dutch vloet and the Dutch vloed also stem from the Old Frisian and Old Swedish flôd.

Going further back to the 6th to mid 11th centuries in the Old High German, we find flout which manifested in the Middle High German (1050-1350 CE) vluot and then the German flut. In Old Norse, pre-sixth century CE, flood was flô(o with an ‘x’ above it) and in Gothic it was flôdus. Finally, the farthest flood can be traced is to the Old Teutonic flô (o with an ‘x’ over it) and the pre-Teutonic plōtús.

It is with the pre-Teutonic plotús that we see why the action of flowing is so important to the definition of flood. Plōtús comes from the Aryan verbal stem plō, “whence flow, in the primary sense, in accordance with the original function of the suffix -tu, is ‘action of flowing’, though the concrete uses are found in all Teutonic languages.”

I know this little etymology won’t help anyone stay high and dry over the coming days, but I hope it is interesting to know that flood holds so many benign connotations in addition to its overpowering one. Hopefully the rains will stop soon and the city will catch a breath of air from its swimming. Until then, just remember that flood originally refers to the action of flowing—gerunds are everywhere.