1.

An introduction to vocabulary development through semantic webs:

The archeology of words
Words and their meanings change through time because human cultures and their
physical productions change. English is a Germanic language, whose speakers
conquered a Roman Imperial province, Britain. There they were themselves
conquered by Germanic cousins, Vikings and Normans. Each change of ruler opened
up changes in trade, agriculture, and religion, which appear in the archeological
record as distinct buildings, tools, and other artifacts and in the vocabulary record
as different words, whose meanings were modified because they reflected those
differences in the architecture, religion, government, and economy around the
speakers.
Just as new buildings are often built with the remnants of older buildings; new words
often use remnants of older words. If they are Germanic, they develop older
Germanic meanings. If they are Germanic translations of Latin or Greek or if they
are direct borrowings from Greek or Latin, they develop the older meanings of words
from or borrowed by the Romans or the Greeks all the way back to the Sumerians,
Ancient Chinese and Ancient Egyptians.
As an immediate example, we can take the common Germanic word for thanks,
which clearly derives from an old past tense of think. Just as sink, sank, sunk,
there was a pattern think, thank, thunk. But, the past form thank was limited to a
narrower meaning, while still emphasizing thinking about someone. The pattern
was changed to think, thought, thought, and thank was given new and particular
duties. For being thoughtful and considerate (a Latin translation of the Germanic
original) to anyone is a proper response to that persons good behavior towards
you. Thinking about someone leads to gracious behavior (the Latin idea found in
Spanish and Italian) and to obligation (the Latin idea found in Portuguese), and to
mercy and compassion (the Latin ideas found in French). Therefore, gracious,
compassionate persons feel obliged when they think about others graciousness to
them.
European revolutions and social change have modified the meanings of many
words. Modern words do not have the same meaning through time: for example, a
simple 14th century description of a Catholic nun, whose words all have modern
equivalents, requires a full translation into modern English:
She was a silly, gentle nun, meant she was a holy nun from a noble family 600
years ago, not a giggly, kind, older lady.
For the English word silly remember that German selig means holy, and for
gentle remember that genteel and gentleman originally referred to the nobility. As
society changes so do the social meanings of words.
Lets take a few more examples and see how far back they lead us.
A. The web spun by Bread and its many implications:

Bread was and is a basic food concept in all of Europe, but all of the ancient
Germanic peoples, Goths, Gepids, Franks, Ostrogoths, Saxons, etc., who conquered
the Romans and became rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, arranged social ranks
through Bread. Over time these forms were translated into Latin equivalents based
on Roman meanings except for the lowest rank that kept its older meaning in a
Latin word.
English was further from Rome and its speakers kept the old ideas in old words
except for the lowest rank that changed into a Latin form with the same older
Germanic meaning:
A leader was a lord (loaf + ward/guard (protector)).
A leaders noble wife was a lady (loaf + dough (maker)).
The followers were companions (from Latin panis, bread, but a translation of the
original Germanic, loaf-eaters)
Thus, our modern House of Lords has semantic connections with a bakery. The lord
gives the ladys bread to his companions, who are thoughtfully grateful and loyal.
Today, bread (except when it refers to cash money) would not get a politician far,
although bread and circuses worked very well for Caesar.
B. Travelings web of difficult meanings in English:
Old English had fare for travel in all of its aspects. We still ask for cab or bus fare,
and inquire about the fare at a restaurantmeaning the food, which keeps the
travelers legs going. We also journey (a days travel) and voyage (sight-seeing)
using words of Latin origins. Yet, the most common word is also from Latin and is
shared by almost all Romance languages as the common word for work (in French,
Italian, and Spanish).
This word travel has a sister form travail that is a nuanced form of labor as in
to give birth. It means to undergo a very painful birth, and this is no surprise
because the original meaning of the Latin word was a form of torture. Labor in the
late-Latin Imperial period was metaphorically, torture. Therefore, the English have
designated a common trip or a journey, a very painful experience. Yet, travel today
may not reflect much of this older aspect, which still is recognizable to anyone
speaking French.
C. Trees durable and very much involved in the web of the truth we value:
The ancient Germans and many other European peoples considered trees divine
representatives. Many folk traditions involve tying wishes to trees or to expecting
fairies or elves to live in or around trees. Christian missionaries converting the
pagan Germans were armed with axes in order to destroy sacred groves of trees
especially long-lived oaks.
The Germanic word tree is related to the Latin root that gives English durable, but
the Germanic word is the source of many native English words that would seem

very far from a foresters world. Trust, true, troth, truth, and truce are all
developments of the root meaning tree.
The next time that you reflexively knock on wood remember that anciently many a
wedding trothpromise (betrothal) or a battle truce were officially sworn to under a
sacred tree while both parties touched its wood.
D. The 'papyrus' web has created a mighty tree of many branches:
The art of writing was differently developed in different cultural areas. Today, we kill
whole forests to make the paper for our records. In Egypt, they wrote on scrolls
formed of pasted together sheets made from the pounded stems of the papyrus
plant (the Greek word) and the Greeks used the Egyptian technology, when they
founded Alexanders Empire. For an Empire requires recordsespecially tax records.
The Alexandrian Library was formed of scrolls stacked in numbered and lettered
racks.
The Greeks had long before used the wet clay tablet, an idea borrowed from the
Sumerians of Ancient Iraq. This writing called Linear-B was preserved when volcanic
destruction hardened the wet clay.
In between these periods Greek kingdoms experimented with writing on treated
sheep and goat skins. This was the ancestor of todays parchment (a name derived
from the city of Pergamum in Anatolia, where workers cured the leather sheets).
This form of writing material had the distinct advantage that writing could be erased
with a scraper.
Other cultures had related but locally produced writing materialsin India they
wrote on prepared palm leaves; in China they wrote on silk rolls. Every culture that
ruled over large populations created record libraries that were continuously added
to by professional scribes. For the Romans, a drought in Egypt or Cyprus that killed
the papyrus crop was a disaster for the Emperors bureaucrats.
Repeated droughts largely due to wars and invasions led to increased reliance on
parchment over papyrus in the northern sections of the Empire. Parchment was not
easily formed into scrolls or long strips of papyrus pasted together. Parchment was
best collected into flat stacks that were sewn together between hard wooden
covers. Thus, bookscalled codicesreplaced the scrolls so famously used in
Egypt.
The Chinese discovered that foreign kingdoms especially prized their silk, and as
foreigners paid higher prices for it, they sought a substitute for it for their record
keeping. The invention of paper brought the world a cheaper sheet that shared
many of the characteristics of papyrus and of parchment. The technique was soon
learned by the people of India, who shared it with the Arabs, who shared it with the
Europeans.
As outside circumstances changed the availability of writing materials, the nature of
the storage placeslibraries and archiveschanged as well. The entire Eurasian
world was conquered by paper, and the parchment, palm leaf, and papyrus book

became largely replaced by paper, which could also be erased. Parchment remained
a writing surface for the most expensive and durable books (note that the Germanic
word book refers to the beech bark the Germans originally wrote on), and all of the
contemporary books had the same convenient form of codices, sewn between two
hard covers.
Note, however, that our word paper is the Latin form of Greek papyrus, and other
specialized words referring to finished papyrus, schedule (leaf of papyrus) and chart
(many papyrus sheets glued together) continued to be the terms used by
bureaucrats writing on recently arrived paper. Just as in the word book, the word
paper remained the same, but the physical thing referred to was completely
different and from China, not Egypt.
Today we continue to use the words chart, card, charter, carton, cartoon, cardboard,
schedule, cartridge, and cartoucheall derived from a Greek word referring to
thickened papyrus sheets. Ironically, the paper gun powder cartridges used by
Napoleons troops in Egypt had the same shape as the parenthetical frame that
Ancient Egyptian writers placed around names in their texts and carved
monuments. The term cartouche, now used by serious academic archeologists, is
derived from Napoleonic soldiers slang.
There is one word that we might adddivan. Originally, this word entered English
from the native governments in India. In ancient Persia it referred to the record
library of clay tablets-dipikhane, where the great king ruled on political matters
advised by the bureaucrats of state. Dipi is the Akkadian word for clay tablet and is
as old as or older than Egyptian papyrus. Khane means home or house in ancient
Persian. The place of making official decisions was ultimately named for this place
of records and the word divan became both a collection of books and alternate
name for government in both Arabic and Persian throughout Islamic territory.
Today, the term denotes a backless couch, like the one sat on by a Muslim ruler in
India. The English narrowed the library to a piece of furniture in it.
Cards, charts, schedules and electronic paper continue to flourish in the digital age.
As you create a chart with your I-Pad on the divan, remember that you are using
terms familiar to Alexander and Darius. We will now turn to schools in all their
variation.
E. Oddities, hanging about School:
As we have noted many times, the word for an activity sometimes becomes the
name of the place, where people do that activity.
The Greek word school had a very special meaning close to the French word salon.
The original meaning of the word was having leisure or taking a vacation from daily
work in order to meet with friends to discuss the political matters of the city state.
Ancient Greeks thought that this was an elevated form of entertainment. So we
have Platos and Aristotles schools or as 18th century French ladies might say,
salons.

It was a long road from philosophical school to the average school on the city block.
No one today would think of taking a vacation at school, Instead they take a
vacation from school. Yet, we can hope that they never need to take a vacation from
learning.