Owen Barfield, long-time member of the Inklings (the legendary Oxford University book club whose members included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis), liked words.
He liked them so much that he drew from them a detailed history of Western Europe's epistemic development.
History in English Words is a plunge into etymology that claims that the words we use contain a pattern that impacts more than language hobbyists. The basic thesis is this: if we know our history, and know which English words are borrowed from which other languages, we can put two and two together to trace the introduction and evolution of concepts we as a civilization now consider given, but which we did not always know. Thus we can gain a new lens through which to see our cosmology and learn from it.
Fascinating, right? If you're not a fan of etymology, linguistics, or history, don't worry; I'll have another science fiction review up soon. My recommendation of this book is simple: if you like etymology, absolutely read it; if not, give it a try, but don't feel bad if you don't get all the way through it.
For my fellow word nerds, this is an important book. First of all, most of the book is a detailed walkthrough of the various periods and categories of English's lexical history, beginning with its oldest known (to Barfield) ancestor, Indo-European. Different chapters give us windows into subjects like Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian doctrine, to name but a few. His sequence is mostly chronological. Most of the subject matter consists of specific examples of words we use every day, many of whose present meanings have escaped completely from their original metaphor or intention.
Speaking of metaphor, there's a sub-theme to the book concerning the creation of words that is relevant to anyone who seeks to write creatively. I've said before that it's our responsibility to take an active role in the maturation of the language we speak, but only here did I learn that this action is actually metaphor at its root. Barfield's example is the word "prevaricate," which a modern dictionary defines as "to speak or act in an evasive way," but whose Latin roots mean "to plow in a furrow." Barfield argues that we can't actually conceive of new ideas in any way other than building on concepts we already possess. So if you can't just point to an object and place a new word on it, the only way you can create it in an understandable way is to compare it to something which it actually is not: a metaphor!
While I'm here, I might as well point out the implications of this conclusion on fantasy. G. K. Chesterton, from whom the name of my blog is ripped off, has written that "the test of fairyland [is that] you cannot IMAGINE two and one not making three. But you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail." This reminds me of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity, which basically says that the language we learn to use influences the concepts we are able to envision. I propose that how we write, read and accept fantasy, a genre naturally experimental with metaphor, indicates what we are able to conceive as a culture, and by omission what is unimaginable to us.
I may revisit this hypothesis, and I hope those of you who decide to read Barfield are as delighted as I am with both his adventure into our language and with how far our imagination can take us.
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