LandonWillis

Category: English

  • Word of The Week No 9: Hosanna

    We only see the word “Hosanna” in two places in our English translations of the Bible, Mark 11:9-10 and Matthew 21:9,15.

    These examples both happen during Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Here are all the verses where we can find “Hosanna”:

    Mark 11:9-10: 9 Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,

    “Hosanna!”

    “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

    10 “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”

    “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

    Matthew 21:9: 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,

    “Hosanna to the Son of David!”

    “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

    “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

    And Matthew 21:15 15 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.

    So, what on earth does “Hosanna” mean?

    Well, the word in the original Greek manuscripts is hosanna, which is just a transliteration of hosha’na, which is either a Hebrew word or an Aramaic word.

    Either way, this word, hosha’na, seems to be a contraction of the Hebrew word hoshi’ah-nna. And this word, hoshi’ah-nna, does appear in other parts of the Bible, specifically in Psalm 118:25.

    In Psalm 118:25-26, we read: 25 Lord, save us!
        Lord, grant us success!

    26 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

    That first phrase, “Lord, save us!” (also translated as “Save, we pray”), is the Hebrew word hoshi’ah-nna. When this got shortened down to hosha’na, it started to be used by Jews as a common part of a hymn/prayer.

    And over time the word began to mean not just “Save us” but something more along the lines of “Honor to the one who saves”. This explains why the crowds were shouting Hosanna as a shout of praise. The crowds meant “Honor to the Savior” and “Honor to the Messiah” when they were shouting out Hosanna.

    Plus, as an interesting connection, Jesus’ Aramaic/Hebrew name was Yehoshua, which translates as “The Lord is Salvation” or “The Lord is deliverance”. So, the shouts of Hosanna had an extra connection directly to His earthly name.

    Also, notice how in Psalm 118:26, it says “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” This is exactly what the crowds shouted in both Mark 11:9 and Matthew 21:9. That is a major piece of evidence which lets us know that the word Hosanna does indeed originate from hoshi’ah-nna in Psalm 118:25.

    The Gospel of Luke, per usual, does not contain this Hebrew/Aramaic expression. But in Luke 19:38, we see again the slightly altered phrase “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

    So, “Hosanna” was originally a cry of distress meaning “Save us!”, but over time it changed into a shout of praise to the Lord/Savior/Messiah. And this shout of praise was most fulfilled during Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, just a few days before He would in fact save us.

  • Golgotha, Calvary, And The Place of The Skull

    The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John all tell us that Jesus was crucified in a place called Golgotha.

    They also all tell us that Golgotha is a Hebrew word meaning “place of the skull”. (Technically, Golgotha is an Aramaic word, but Aramaic is commonly called Hebrew, since it was the common language of the Hebrew people at the time).

    Plus, the Gospel of Luke simply tells us that they crucified him at a place called “The Skull”.

    Every time we see the word “skull” in these passages, it is a translation of the Greek word Kranion, which means “skull” and is also where we get our modern word “cranium”.

    But, where do we get the word “Calvary” out of all this?

    Well, when the translator Jerome was compiling all the Bible into Latin in the late 300s AD, he properly translated that Greek word Kranion into the Latin word for “skull”, Calvaria.

    Then, as the centuries went by, some people translated the Latin Bible into English. When they did this, they just borrowed the Latin term and called the place “Calvary”, from Calvaria.

    Most modern English translations actually use the original manuscripts (Greek) when translating The New Testament though. So, now most Bibles will call it “the place of the skull”.

    But, we still have the word “Calvary” now, which is entirely unrelated to an army of horses, a “cavalry”.

    And, as for the place where Jesus was crucified, there’s been a whole lot of guessing about where it is and why it’s called the place of the skull.

    First, as a quick note, in the original Greek it’s more accurate to say “of the skull” and not “of a skull”.

    Anyhow, all four Gospels just call Golgotha/Calvary a “place”. Tradition has said that this was probably a hill, but we don’t really know for certain.

    A lot of people seem to think the place was called Golgotha because it was on a hill that kind of looked like a skull. Some other people say that it might have been because it could have been close to some tombs. And there are a good deal more guesses that scholars have made over the years.

    The gist of it is all pretty simple though. Jesus was crucified at a place called “place of the skull”. The Hebrew (Aramaic) term for “place of the skull” is Golgotha. And “Calvary” is just pretty much the Latin word for the same thing.

  • Word of The Week No 8: Tortiloquy

    Tortiloquy: crooked talk, crooked speech

    Tortiloquy is a weird word. The only surviving record of this being a word anywhere ever (that I’ve found at least) is from a single book, Thomas Blount’s Glossographia.

    Thomas Blount was a lexicographer(someone who writes dictionaries) in the seventeenth century. In 1656, he published his book, Glossographia, in which he covered some eleven thousand strange and rarely used English words. One of these words is tortiloquy.

    Blount says that this comes from Latin Tortiloquium. However, this does not appear to be a real Latin word in any dictionary. But, it could indeed come from the Latin words tortilis, meaning “twisted” or “crooked”, and loqui, meaning “to speak”.

    My best guess though is that he more or less made this word up all on his own because I can’t for the life of me find “tortiloquy” or tortiloquium referenced anywhere else ever aside from Thomas Blount’s dictionary.

    “The politician denied all accusations of tortiloquy earlier in his career”.

    “The crude mobster spoke nothing but tortiloquy”.

  • Word of The Week No 7: Obstreperous

    Obstreperous: loud, noisy, clamorous, defiant, disobedient, unruly

    Obstreperous comes from the Latin word Obstrepere, which means “to make a loud noise” or “to roar against”, and itself comes from two other Latin words, ob meaning “against” or “right before”, and strepere meaning “to make a noise”. So, Obstrepere literally means “to make a noise against”, or in other words, “to be defiant”.

    “The obstreperous children constantly got themselves into trouble.”

    “Tim did not like how obstreperous his new dog was.”

  • Word of the Week No 6: Animadvert

    Animadvert: to criticize openly and harshly; to censure;  to notice or observe; to turn the mind to; to consider; to make an animadversion

    Animadvert comes from the Latin word Animadvertere, which means “to notice,” and itself comes from three separate Latin words, anima meaning “mind,” ad meaning “to”, and vertere meaning “to turn”. So, together it means “to turn the mind towards”. Originally this word in English carried a similar meaning of “to notice” or “to consider”, but that meaning fell away, when the newer meaning of criticism or censure replaced it. Now, the word as a whole is mostly obsolete. 

    “The lawyer animadverted on the legality of the case.”

    “Cicero famously animadverted against his many opponents.”

  • Word of the Week No 5: Bible

    Where does the word “Bible” come from?

    It first started out as the Greek phrase ta biblia to hagia, which literally means “The Holy Books”. Christians seem to have first started using this phrase to talk about the Bible as a whole by the 2nd or 3rd century.

    This got translated into Latin as Biblia Sacra, which also means “Holy Books”. However, that word Biblia is in something called the neuter plural in Latin. So it is a plural word (it means “books” not “book”), but it looks like it could be a feminine singular word. Thanks to this, during the Middle Ages, Biblia Sacra began to just mean “Holy Book”.

    That is where many languages now get their word for “Bible”. It’s just the Latin word Biblia, which, by the end of the Middle Ages, meant “book”.

    But, this wasn’t the common Latin word for the Bible until around the 800s AD. Rather, Jerome (the man who did a lot of work with translating the Bible into Latin in the 300s) and other Romans would have commonly used the word Bibliotheca, which literally means “library”. This is where we get the lesser used English word “bibliothec”, which used to be our common word for “the Bible” back in Middle English.

    Both of those words, though, Biblia and Bibliotheca, clearly have a similar root Bibli-. So, where do these words come from originally?

    Well, they both go back to the Greek word Biblion, meaning “a scroll” or “a book”. The Greeks got this word from the Ancient Egyptian word for papyrus, Byblos. And, it seems that the word was introduced into Greek through the city of Byblos, which was probably named that because they were an exporter of Egyptian papyrus.

    Overall, the word used for the Bible has a long and interesting history. But, in most languages that I’ve seen it just ends up going back to the word for “book”. So nice and simple.

  • Word of the Week No 4: Amen

    This is one of my favorite etymologies just because it’s so nice and easy. So, where do we get the word “Amen”? We get it from the Old English word “Amen”, which got the word from Latin “Amen”, which got the word from Greek “Amen”, which got the word from Hebrew “Amen”.

    Isn’t that just amazing? Over thousands of years, the word is still the same. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any word go through so much time and so many languages without any changes.

    But, what did this word “Amen” mean in Hebrew? Well, it seems that it could be used as a noun, an adjective, or an adverb. So, it could mean “truth”, “true”, or “truly”.

    It’s related to the Hebrew verb aman, which means “to be firm”. So, if you have “Amen” soil, it’s firm soil. Or if you make an “Amen” statement, you are making a true/firm statement.

    Whenever we see Jesus in the Bible saying “Truly, truly I say to you” or “Verily, verily I say unto you”, He’s just using the word Amen. It would be a perfectly correct translation to write that Jesus said “Amen, amen I say to you”. That’s what the Greek authors did when they included the Hebrew term Amen in their writings of what Jesus said. They just wrote it with Greek letters instead of Hebrew letters.

    However, Luke’s Gospel is very fascinating on this front. Apparently, when he wrote the phrase “Truly, truly I say to you”, he actually translated the word Amen into the Greek word Alethos, which also means “truly”.

    Every English Bible I’ve ever seen takes the same strategy that Luke did. They translate all those “Amen”s as “truly” and “verily” and “faithfully” instead of just keeping the word as “Amen”.

    This also explains why people will sometimes shout out “Amen!” when they agree with something. It’s like shouting “absolutely!” or “that’s true!”.

  • Cash, Cattle, And Coins: Where We Get Our Words For Money

    People have used lots of different things to barter and measure wealth throughout history. But, most seem to trace back to either coins or cows.

    For example, the word “money” comes from the Latin moneta, which is a shortening of the phrase Juno Moneta, the temple in Rome where they minted coins. So, “money” is named after the place where they make coins.

    However, a very different example is the word “cash”. This comes from the Latin word capsa, which is just a box or a case (the word “case” also comes from capsa). Originally, “cash” could just refer to a cash box, where you would collect money, such as if you had a small business. But, over time, “cash” started to just be a general term for the money itself.

    Another word is “pecuniary”. Pecuniary is a big word that just means “having to do with money”. It comes from the Latin word pecus, meaning “cattle”. This is because, for a long time, wealth was measured in how much livestock you owned. In fact, the common word in Latin for “money” was pecunia.

    And this is not unique among European languages. Many words in other languages have their roots tracing back to cattle. One example is in Spanish, where the word for “to earn wages” is ganar, and the word for “cattle” is ganado.