The ontology of etymology
Why not start out with a whopper: what is the relationship between a word’s form and the nature of what it names? Socrates was among the first to ponder this, according to Anatoly Liberman’s fascinating new book Word Origins and How We Know Them:
Socrates has great respect for wordsmiths and calls them lawgivers. A lawgiver suggests names that bring out the essence of the thing named. However, every word ... is not predestined to have the form we happen to know.
Posted by Nathan Bierma on 04/02 at 04:09 PM
Next entry: One misgiving is better than two
Previous entry: Justification for Existence