Vladimir Suchan : - In Slavic languages, the word for the world (svet) is derived from the word for the light (svetlo): the world is where the light is. In this one would also want to believe that the word for the world would have been derived from the word itself--from Logos. Not so. In English, the word world literally meant a mans world. The etymology of world itself is very interesting and revealing. It reads like a code for understanding a good deal about the West and the US: Old English woruld, worold human existence, the affairs of life, also a long period of time, also the human race, mankind, humanity, a word peculiar to Germanic languages (cognates: Old Saxon werold, Old Frisian warld, Dutch wereld, Old Norse verold, Old High German weralt, German Welt), with a literal sense of age of man, from Proto-Germanic *wer man (Old English wer, still in werewolf; see virile) + *ald age (see old). Originally life on earth, this world (as opposed to the afterlife), sense extended to the known world, then to the physical world in the broadest sense, the universe (c.1200). In Old English gospels, the commonest word for the physical world, was Middangeard (Old Norse Midgard), literally the middle enclosure (see yard (n.1)), which is rooted in Germanic cosmology. Greek kosmos in its ecclesiastical sense of world of people sometimes was rendered in Gothic as manaseþs, literally seed of man. The usual Old Norse word was heimr, literally abode (see home). Words for world in some other Indo-European languages derive from the root for bottom, foundation (such as Irish domun, Old Church Slavonic duno, related to English deep); the Lithuanian word is pasaulis, from pa- under + saule sun. Original sense in world without end, translating Latin saecula saeculorum, and in worldly. Latin saeculum can mean both age and world, as can Greek aion. Meaning a great quantity or number is from 1580s. Out of this world surpassing, marvelous is from 1928; earlier it meant dead. World Cup is by 1951; U.S. baseball World Series is by 1893 (originally often Worlds Series). World power in the geopolitical sense first recorded 1900. World-class is attested from 1950, originally of Olympic athletes.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 23:02:29 +0000
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