Rightly (or wrongly) dividing the word of truth

We have to be careful what we do with words. In particular, we need to be cautious before we explain a word in terms of its apparent constituent parts, in the belief that they are the key to its significance. We should always check the linguistic facts first! If we don’t, we can create fake news. 

Let me first share a popular but unsound pseudo-etymological explanation. I’ll introduce it by putting forward a similar but entirely invented case that I think you will immediately see is absurd. Suppose someone expounded the meaning of redeem by suggesting that it was from re- ‘back’ plus deem ‘to judge’, as if ‘redeeming’ meant ‘reversing a judgement’. After a bit of thinking and maybe a bit of research, we would correctly point out that redeem doesn’t contain the word deem, but instead is derived from the Latin word redimere ‘to buy back’ (from which we also get redemption). This Latin word has no connection with the native word deem, a relative of doom, which originally meant ‘judgement’.

So here’s my case of bad etymology. It has become a trope repeated by speakers and writers in every part of the church, and I see red every time I hear it! It is the statement that remember comes from re- plus member. It is particularly used to expound the meaning of the Eucharist. The act of remembering, it is said, is actually re-membering, bringing back together the members of the body. Attractive though this might seem, it is complete balderdash, because the word remember is in no way connected with the word member, meaning a limb of the body or a participant in a social group. Remember is derived from Latin rememorare, which in turn is based on memor ‘mindful’, from which we also get memory, memorial, and memoir. This word, though also Latin, has nothing to do with Latin membrum, from which we get member. Look out for this howler: it’s very popular!

Now let me give you a (rare) good example of this practice of explaining a word by means of its constituent parts. It concerns the word atonement. We now use the verb to atone for to mean ‘to make amends for (an offence)’, with the idea of doing something painful in order to make up for a wrong that one has done to another person.  But the original meaning of the verb was ‘to unite in harmony, to reconcile’. The current meaning of the verb atone had not emerged when atonement was coined. This is because atonement comes from the phrase at one plus -ment, and denotes the action of  causing two people to be ‘at one’, i.e., reconciliation. The original meaning did not involve any idea of making amends. Reconciliation is not essentially about making amends: it can often be effected either by a third person bringing the two estranged people together, or by the injured person reaching out to the one who has behaved badly. 

So, if a Christian speaker or writer explains atonement in an etymological way as ‘at-one-ment’, making two estranged parties ‘at one’, or reconciling them, they are on firm New Testament ground: ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself’; the loving Father reaches out to hostile, unforgiving, unrepentant humankind through his Son. 

Sound etymology makes for sound teaching!

Philologus