I've been accused of thinking that words have basic meanings which are constant throughout its uses. For example, we often hear that the word bat has a variety of meanings: the flying mammal, the stick used to hit a ball, or what a coquettish girl does with her eyelashes. I maintain that those are all the same word, having something to do with an item being fanned back and forth. A bat's wings go back and forth. So do the girl's eyelashes. So does the stick when it's swung in the strike-zone. So even though we use them as different words, all those words have one essential meaning, one basic meaning. I don't see any "fallacy" in this.
Another example is the word train. A bride's dress has a train. A choo-choo is usually called a train. And then there's the train (or retinue) who came with the Queen of Sheba to hear Solomon. The common theme here is the thing that follows along in a row, following the lead item.
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You can come up with a common theme among the words but the baseball bat comes from the French word for pestle so it is named after it's shape. The bat used for winking comes from the Old French for flapping wings so it is named after it's motion.
ReplyDeleteI love etymology and word derivation. Pastor Gross is an absolute master at this -- I just look in the dictionary : )
That would be
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and
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Not like we studied contractions or anything this year. Sheesh!
But don't you think it's interesting how the mammal-bat and the eyelash-bat both are words coming from "flutter" and the baseball bat comes from a word that means "beat" (at least, that's what my dictionary says). Beating and fluttering have that "back and forth" connection. Even if the words derive from different languages, I think too about the connections between words within language-groups. I just think it's really cool.
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