Opining Online

Etymology. Callimachus explores word-pairs. His post led me to wonder what the etymology of “punish” is. That search led me to Etymologically Speaking, where I’ve spent the last two hours.

Some of my favorites:

Charlatan

From the Spanish “charlar,” to chat.

Candidate

From the Latin Candidus word meaning, “bright, shining, glistening white.” The ancient Roman candidates for office would wear bright white togas. This same word also gave rise to “candid,” which candidates rarely are.

Cretin

From the French “Crétin,” which originally meant “Christian.”

Debonair

French for “of good air.” In the Middle Ages, people’s health was judged partly by how they smelled. A person who gave off “good air” was presumed healthier and happier.

Elite

From the Latin elire, meaning “to choose,” from which we also get the modern Spanish word meaning the same, elegir.

Genuine

Originally meant “placed on the knees.” In Ancient Rome, a father legally claimed his newborn child by sitting in front of his family and placing his child on his knee.

Heresy

Greek for “Choice.”

Kampf (German) Struggle

From the Latin “campus” — for their type of fortification, where the Roman soldiers had their military drills — from which we also drive the English words, “camp,” “campus” and “champion.” Thus, when we talk about a “college campus,” there are subtle militaristic overtones.

Knight

From the Old English “cniht,” which meant “boy, servant.”

Kopf (German) Head

From Latin “cuppa,” meaning “cup”; the Romans used the cup as a metaphor for the upper part of the head. Similarly, another Latin word for “cup,” “testa,” has now become the French “Tête,” for “head,” too. Note that both the Germans and the Celts used a “skullcap” “top of the human head”) as a drinking vessel; this was part of the honoring of the enemy ritual. Thus related to “chief” and “capital” (and “testicle” as well).

Liberty

The Latin words “Liber,” “Libera,” and “Liberum” — with a Long I — came from the root meaning, “to pour.” From this, we get the word “Liberty” (hence pronounced with a short I), from the freedom we feel when we get drunk.

Mistress

From the French “Maîtresse,” which originally meant “bride.”

Money

From the Latin word “moneta” which originally meaning, “warning.”

Nice

From the Latin “nescius,” for “ignorant,” and, at various times before the current definition became established meant “foolish” then “foolishly precise” then “pedantically precise” then “precise in a good way” and then our current definition.

Occasion

From the Latin Occasion, meaning, “accident, or a grave event.”

Old; and Alt (German) Old

“Alt” originally meant, “Grown up”; the participle of “growing”; related to “Alan,” which meant, “to grow” but no longer exists in modern German. In Old English, the word “Alan” was also used in this same sense of growing or nourishing. Related to the Latin “alt” meaning “high.”

Pagan

From the Latin paganu(m), for “someone who is not from the city, rather from the country.” In late Latin, this turned into pagensis, “one who is from the country,” and this utimately became the French pays and the Spanish País, both meaning “nation.”

Pay

Pay goes back ultimately to Latin, “pax” peace, by way of, appease, pacify. So “pay” originally meant “pay off,” to keep the peace.

Salary; Salt

In the early days of Rome its soldiers were given a handful of salt each day. The salt ration was subsequently replaced by a sum of money allowing each man to buy his own, and relieving the commisariat of the trouble of transporting it. The money received was referred to as their “salt money” (salarium in Latin). Eventually, the term would make its way into medieval France, where a soldier’s payment was known as his solde (which is still in use today as the term for a soldier’s or sailor’s pay), and it was in paid for with a special coin called a sol. By extension, the word also came to refer not only to a soldier’s wage, but also to the soldier himself, evidenced by the medieval French term soldat, which itself came from the Old French soudier. For its part, the English word “soldier” comes from the Middle English souder, which also derived from soudier [Footnote: Contrary to popular belief, salt–necessary as it was and unlike other spices–was never very expensive. It only became expensive towards the end of the twelfth century A.D., when it was used as a means of taxation and people often went without it, as a result–a fact not unconnected with the famines and deficiencies that afflicted so many generations of Europeans at the time).].

Senator

From the Latin “senex,” meaning “old”; thus related to “senile.”

Silly

From 1550 to 1675 was “very extensively” used in the sense of deserving of pity and compassion, helpless. It is a derivative of the Middle English “seely,” from the German “selig,” meaning happy, blissful, blessed, as well as punctual, observant of season.

Sinister

From the Latin “sinister” for “left.” Hence, left is evil. 

Sleazy

The Eastern European region of Silesia was known for its fine cloth. Eventually, so many low-quality imitations wound up on the market that Silesian turned into sleazy.

Utopia

Greek for “no where.”

Villain

From “Villaneus,” meaning, “inhabitant of a villa,” i.e., a “peasant.”

Wit

From the Old English “witan,” meaning to know; intelligence.

Oh, and “punish.”

Gue

At least some part of the body gets better with age. John McCain’s campaign should jump on statements like 

“It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing,” said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. “It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.”

and

“A broad attention span may enable older adults to ultimately know more about a situation and the indirect message of what’s going on than their younger peers,” Dr. Hasher said. “We believe that this characteristic may play a significant role in why we think of older people as wiser.”

and

“If older people are taking in more information from a situation, and they’re then able to combine it with their comparatively greater store of general knowledge, they’re going to have a nice advantage.”

Obama should be worried that the article indicates that an ability to ignore distractions, though quicker, ultimately results in assimilating incomplete information. In his case, I think it is not only a desire to not be ”distracted” but also an ingrained part of his temperament.  

via Instapundit

I did not hear the speech, but have read the transcript. Twice, so far.

He has salvaged his campaign. He hasn’t yet convinced me to vote for him should he survive Hillary at the convention. He is still far too liberal lefty socialist.

You can watch the speech on his website.

My fear is that this speech is going to do more dividing than uniting. He’s not painted a nice picture of either race and offered no strategy for bringing them closer other than proposing common enemies which, as President, he will do something about:

…we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

I could vote for a McCain/Romney ticket - put Huckabee on it anywhere and I am OFF. I could vote for an Obama ticket, but put a Clinton on it and I am OFF.

Where do I stand? Does that make me a moderate, undecided, ignorant (don’t answer that…)

What’s up?

My strong point issues are the war  - I’m a hawk and ever so in favor for it and when are we going to do a surge in Afghanistan and… code pink can go to hell.

Then immigration - why do we want to punish 12 million (or however many) people because of where they were born? Amnesty is the only feasible answer. Close the border also, if you must, but give amnesty.

Healthcare? Hell, the high cost of health care is because we, the spoiled, demand so much of it. Regardless what medical scientists want us to believe, they cannot cure everything or always diagnose it in time. Too bad… but true.

So… again - the open-ended question that my attorney has advised me is not wise - Where do I stand when compared with the rest of America? Am I that different?

If all the pundits and news stories about the various candidates has you confused (as opposed to severely depressed) Tony Woodlief, author of Sand in the Gears, has gone to trouble of explaining in terms anyone can understand:

Here’s my ill-informed reading of the status of our national presidential marathon, based on what I’ve gleaned from airport conversations and the occasional glance at Google news headlines:

Now, go there and read it all. You will be enlightened. (via Megan McArdle)

Professor Bainbridge says Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. (via Instapundit)

The dear professor is awfully non-inclusive. Here’s my list of who is worse than Hillary:

Ron Paul
Dennis Kucinich
Mike Huckabee
John Edwards

Oh, I’m sure there are others. Those are just off the top of my head.

I’ve never quite understood the enthusiasm for getting rid of all illegal immigrants. Seems to me a fence keeps those already here in as well as new ones out… maybe not.

There are productive people who are illegals and I’d be proud to be a sister citizen with most of them. I don’t get the urge to punish quite as much as the “hard” right does.
 

I didn’t watch tonight’s GOP debate in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina - I find them boring, but I do like reading other people’s comments as they are watching. So far I’ve read:

S.C. Politics Live by USC political science professor Blease Graham. Since he actually seemed to take Ron Paul seriously, I don’t know quite what to think. He also grouped Thompson next to Paul with Guiliani, then Huckabee at the other end of the spectrum, with McCain and Romney in the ideological middle. This just does not make sense to me. I think he was trying to hard not to piss anybody off. His final take:

To the extent that Huckabee was the leader going in; Thompson gained at his expense. Paul didn’t expand his constituency, but Giuliani may have added a bit to his at the expense of Romney perhaps more than McCain. Giuliani’s tax plan is the difference for appeal to conservatives to step over Romney.

The Sundries Shack gives the debate overwhelmingly to Fred Thompson. He says everyone else came in second, except Ron Paul.

Heading Right, a group blog, is difficult to follow with several people posting. One of the posters is from Minnesota and rightly points out that Huckabee lost that state with his line about “no bridges falling in Arkansas.” Their notes include McCain as overall winner, Huckabee no gain no loss, Thompson did well enough, and Romney tanked.

Freeman Hunt did a very nice and organized job of live-blogging. Her best comment is about growing revenue by cutting taxes;

Frankly, I don’t care that much about growing tax revenue. Is our goal to make sure that the government has the maximum amount of money possible?

Too bad she wasn’t one of the debaters. She says they all seem to be trying to out Reagan Reagan, compliments Romney on speaking precisely, and actually ends without proclaiming a winner, but providing links to donate to Thompson.

Ann Althouse also notes all the candidates seem to “be in a competition to say ”Reagan” as often as possible.” Looks like this year’s drinking game words will be  “change” for the Democrats and “Reagan” for the Republicans. She notes Frank Luntz’ focus group overwhelming gives it to Thompson as winner and Paul as loser.

Right Wing News - the best line? “Ha! They cut to Mitt and he was looking at Ron Paul like something he scraped off of his shoe.” John Hawkins also slams Brit Hume for trying to get the candidates to second guess the commanders in the field. No one bit. McCain gets a compliment on always being strong on foreign policy. Summary: Ron Paul’s best debate ever, but still a loser. Mike Huckabee, Rudy Guiliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain, with Fred Thompson as winner.

Michelle Malkin - Thompson the big winner, Romney the big loser, McCain, nothing gained, nothing lost. She predicts Brit Hume will get hate mail for his handling of Ron Paul.

Jim Geraghty: “…it’s not unthinkable that Romney wins Michigan, Thompson wins South Carolina, and Giuliani wins Florida. Under that scenario, the five biggest contests of the early GOP Primary season will have generated five different winners.” That scenario fits with what Blease Graham said about no decisive winner until Feb. 5.

Enough for me. Check out Instapundit for more.