Frazz on lexical drift
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For the past week or so, Jef Mallett's Frazz has been exploring etymology and semantic drift.
The current sequence starts on 10/10 (or maybe earlier):
And then continues onward (so far):
The OED's etymologies for economy and for economic take us back to the Greek οἰκονομία (management of a household or family, husbandry, thrift), οἰκονόμος (one who manages a household; generally, manager, administrator), and οἰκονομικός (practised in the management of a household or family, hence, thrifty, frugal, economical).
And if you follow those links to the entries in the Liddell/Scott/Jones Greek-English Lexicon, you'll see that the "management" in question starts out as the domain of women and slaves, though Frazz and Caulfield haven't yet made that connection.
Gene Buckley said,
October 19, 2024 @ 1:56 pm
It's not the main point, of course, but since I happened to read a detailed history of the Balzac quote a few days ago, I thought I'd share the more nuanced original:
"Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait."
An early translation is "The secret of a great fortune made without apparent cause is soon forgotten, if the crime is committed in a respectable way."
The path to the shorter version that is often quoted can be found at https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/09/fortune-crime/.
Andreas Johansson said,
October 21, 2024 @ 3:04 am
As far as I recall, the first version of the Balzac quote I come across was even more pointed: "behind every bourgeois family lies a crime".
BZ said,
October 21, 2024 @ 3:34 pm
Speaking of economy, one thing that's tripping up in Russian now is that the division between economy and economics is different in Russian than it is in English. In fact, Russian экономия (ekonómija) seems to only mean "frugal use of resources", whereas экономика (ékonomika) covers everything else both "economy" and "economics" do in English.