Original Public Meaning

Sometimes, English takes words directly from Latin: mea culpa, alma mater, et cetera. That's the case with today's word: dictator. Even if "dictator" has a rather simple etymology, it has a complex and fascinating political history, which includes infamous Romans like Sulla and Julius Caesar. To conclude, we look at Hannah Arendt's classic work The Origins of Totalitarianism, in which she provocatively claims that the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century should not, in fact, be called dictatorships but instead constitute a novel form of government.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Today's world is full of "consultants" and "advisers" in the domains of business, politics, and even education. But the verb "consult" is an old one, coming directly into English from the Latin consulere. Its etymology, even in the ancient world, is pretty muddled, and this confusion persists today in the often-mistaken words "council" and "counsel." We also consider an essay by the American author Flannery O'Connor on the problems surrounding reading lists in English classrooms.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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When we think of "anarchy," we might imagine rioters in the streets. But the etymology of this word extends well beyond the world of politics. Today we explore the curious roots of "anarchy," which builds on a Greek term that means both "origin" and "authority." Finally, we read a brief passage from Igor Stravinsky's The Poetics of Music on the challenges and temptations of artistic originality.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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When we feel "indifference" about two options before us, we refuse to make a distinction between them. It's a word that's often confused with "ambivalence"—but when we grasp the roots of these words, the distinction between them becomes clearer. To help us appreciate the linguistic and even moral contrast between "indifference" and "ambivalence," we turn to the psychologist and philosopher William James and his comments on saintly virtues in The Varieties of Religious Experience.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Every day we forget things. Thankfully, we don't need to remember every face from our commute, every song on the radio. Today's word "oblivion" draws from this universal experience of forgetting, and its Latin ancestor oblivisci gives us several modern English terms, both common (like "oblivious") and obscure (like "oubliette"). In our consideration of forgetfulness and the practice of leaving things in the past, we look at a poem by Wisława Szymborska, the Polish writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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We're back after a brief hiatus with the word "scrutinize," whose roots draw from the universal experience of dealing with garbage. Well before our modern era of landfills and recycling, the Romans separated their trash—or scruta—from their treasure. From this Latin word scruta, we have inherited the notion of "scrutinizing": looking for something of value amid refuse. To close out, we ponder a surreal description of the American supermarket and its various species of junk from Don DeLillo's novel White Noise.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Our future goals—for our career, for our physical fitness, for anything—are our "aspirations." This word, which literally means "a breathing toward," has an murky connection with its dominant modern meaning of a "desire for our future." These tenuous links still can still help us appreciate the notion of aspiration as it appears in Ralph Waldo Emerson's The Method of Nature, his 1841 meditation on the paradoxical tension between individual ambition and grand historical narrative.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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The word "utopia" was invented in 1516 by Sir Thomas More for his book of the same name. But a utopia seems to draw from two separate Greek notions: a "non-existent place" and a "good place." In today's episode, we consider the confused origins of "utopia," and we consider the word's appearance in the novel Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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When someone is a "patient," that person is, in one sense, weakened by an affliction but also, in another, powerfully enduring it. There's a paradox behind the idea of "patience," and in this episode we consider how this English word confronts this very tension. Finally, we consider a brief poem by the reclusive author Emily Dickinson, whose bracing images remind us that strength can sometimes hide under a veneer of vulnerability.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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In our previous episode, we considered how the Greek vocabulary for "feeling" developed into our contemporary language of "aesthetics." Today, we look at the similar terminology of "sensing" in Latin, which eventually evolved into the English word "sentiment." Interestingly, these similar ancient terms become rather different ideas in English. As a reflection on the roots of our own sentiments, we look to Adam Smith, whose 1776 work The Wealth of Nations tells us not just about economic growth but the judgments we develop through and from our daily labors.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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