Etymology Practice

Get interested in words. Find out how they were/are minted and used. Otherwise, your mind can take a beating on the anvil of the skills-hawking wordsmiths. Jargon and bafflegab can devour you.

Here are a dozen ‘resonances’ you can limber up your listening mind with; on the left are English words and on the right are their Sanskrit connections, and below each set, my comments:

1. Person = Prasanna
You can’t be called a person unless you are happy.

2. Service = Sarvasva = Sarva+Sva
You really serve when you keep others before yourself.

3. Mentor = Mantra

4. Government = Gûrû+mantra
This suggests an advisory, rather than a regulatory function of the government. The lexicographers say that the word has Greek roots. That, to me is B.S.

5. Statement = Stûti + mantra
Kind of obvious!

6. Management = Manûj + mantra
Ditto! Here it is the art of persuasion by appealing to their minds.

7. Etymology = Atha + Moolajah
Literally, the Sanskrit words mean, “Here lie the roots”; which is what, the OCD the English word means:
“The historically verifiable sources of the formation of a word and the development of its meaning”.

8. Decoration = Dekhô ré shän
Obvious, no? I owe a friend for this one.

9. Vast Pyramid = Västûparamidam
This one is neat. I used it for the title of a paper that was published in a learned journal that had devoted an issue to pyramids.

10. Market Capitalism = Mär + kät Kapat + Tilism
Ha! that’s the sum and substance of that awful progenitor of MTV, Hollywood, Atom Bomb, Al Quaida and Saddam Hussein and the other evils of yesterday. (Remember Osama and Saddam were all fed and nurtured by the vanguard votary of MC?) I used that as a title of a piece for a Hindi periodical that focuses on finance and economics.

11. Wit = Vita
As a noun, the Sanskrit word isn’t really a compliment. The more curious can research it.

12. Smart = Smärta
Now that one certainly means more than what you think. The Sanskrit word resonates with the one for memory. So unless you have a good memory you are not Smärta, no matter how sharply you dress or what attitude-chip you carry on your shoulder.

Words are the currency of the global mind’s commerce. Remember ‘In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with…?