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77-508: Lezama is a prominent referent of American Neo-Baroque literature. He created a mature poetic system characterized by its lyricism. His work features a wide variety of metaphors , allusions and allegories which he developed in essays such as Analecta del reloj (1953), La expresión americana (1957), Tratados en La Habana (1958) o La cantidad hechizada (1970). Born in the Columbia Military Encampment close to Havana in

154-419: A derivative . A derivative is one of the words which have their source in a root word, and were at some time created from the root word using morphological constructs such as suffixes, prefixes, and slight changes to the vowels or to the consonants of the root word. For example unhappy , happily , and unhappily are all derivatives of the root word happy . The terms root and derivative are used in

231-469: A suffixed etymon that was once meaningful, Latin castrum ' fort ' . Reflex is the name given to a descendant word in a daughter language, descended from an earlier language. For example, Modern English heat is the reflex of the Old English hǣtu. Rarely, this word is used in reverse, and the 'reflex' is actually the root word rather than the descendant word. However, this usage is usually filled by

308-436: A "conduit metaphor." According to this view, a speaker can put ideas or objects into containers and then send them along a conduit to a listener, who removes the object from the container to make meaning of it. Thus, communication is conceptualized as something that ideas flow into, with the container being separate from the ideas themselves. Lakoff and Johnson provide several examples of daily metaphors in use, including "argument

385-481: A characteristic of speech and writing, metaphors can serve the poetic imagination. This allows Sylvia Plath , in her poem "Cut", to compare the blood issuing from her cut thumb to the running of a million soldiers, " redcoats , every one"; and enabling Robert Frost , in "The Road Not Taken", to compare a life to a journey. Metaphors can be implied and extended throughout pieces of literature. Sonja K. Foss characterizes metaphors as "nonliteral comparisons in which

462-437: A common-type metaphor is generally considered more forceful than a simile . The metaphor category contains these specialized types: It is said that a metaphor is 'a condensed analogy' or 'analogical fusion' or that they 'operate in a similar fashion' or are 'based on the same mental process' or yet that 'the basic processes of analogy are at work in metaphor'. It is also pointed out that 'a border between metaphor and analogy

539-415: A comparison that shows how two things, which are not alike in most ways, are similar in another important way. In this context, metaphors contribute to the creation of multiple meanings within polysemic complexes across different languages. Furthermore, Lakoff and Johnson explain that a metaphor is essentially the understanding and experiencing of one kind of thing in terms of another, which they refer to as

616-476: A comprehensive and chronological catalogue of all meanings and changes that a word (and its related parts) carries throughout its history. The origin of any particular word is also known as its etymology . For languages with a long written history , etymologists make use of texts, particularly texts about the language itself, to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods, how they developed in meaning and form , or when and how they entered

693-925: A high standard with the German Dictionary of the Brothers Grimm . The successes of the comparative approach culminated in the Neogrammarian school of the late 19th century. Still in the 19th century, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used etymological strategies (principally and most famously in On the Genealogy of Morals , but also elsewhere) to argue that moral values have definite historical (specifically, cultural) origins where modulations in meaning regarding certain concepts (such as "good" and "evil") show how these ideas had changed over time—according to which value-system appropriated them. This strategy gained popularity in

770-445: A metaphor as having two parts: the tenor and the vehicle. The tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. The vehicle is the object whose attributes are borrowed. In the previous example, "the world" is compared to a stage, describing it with the attributes of "the stage"; "the world" is the tenor, and "a stage" is the vehicle; "men and women" is the secondary tenor, and "players" is the secondary vehicle. Other writers employ

847-454: A metaphor because the world is not literally a stage, and most humans are not literally actors and actresses playing roles. By asserting that the world is a stage, Shakespeare uses points of comparison between the world and a stage to convey an understanding about the mechanics of the world and the behavior of the people within it. In the ancient Hebrew psalms (around 1000 B.C.), one finds vivid and poetic examples of metaphor such as, "The Lord

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924-414: A metaphor for understanding. The audience does not need to visualize the action; dead metaphors normally go unnoticed. Some distinguish between a dead metaphor and a cliché . Others use "dead metaphor" to denote both. A mixed metaphor is a metaphor that leaps from one identification to a second inconsistent with the first, e.g.: I smell a rat [...] but I'll nip him in the bud" This form is often used as

1001-447: A metaphor is defined as a semantic change based on a similarity in form or function between the original concept and the target concept named by a word. For example, mouse : "small, gray rodent with a long tail" → "small, gray computer device with a long cord". Some recent linguistic theories hold that language evolved from the capability of the brain to create metaphors that link actions and sensations to sounds. Aristotle discusses

1078-465: A metaphorically related area. Cognitive linguists emphasize that metaphors serve to facilitate the understanding of one conceptual domain—typically an abstraction such as "life", "theories" or "ideas"—through expressions that relate to another, more familiar conceptual domain—typically more concrete, such as "journey", "buildings" or "food". For example: one devours a book of raw facts, tries to digest them, stews over them, lets them simmer on

1155-482: A metonymy relies on pre-existent links within such domains. For example, in the phrase "lands belonging to the crown", the word crown is a metonymy because some monarchs do indeed wear a crown, physically. In other words, there is a pre-existent link between crown and monarchy . On the other hand, when Ghil'ad Zuckermann argues that the Israeli language is a "phoenicuckoo cross with some magpie characteristics", he

1232-404: A parody of metaphor itself: If we can hit that bull's-eye then the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate . An extended metaphor, or conceit, sets up a principal subject with several subsidiary subjects or comparisons. In the above quote from As You Like It , the world is first described as a stage and then the subsidiary subjects men and women are further described in

1309-460: A sociological, cultural, or philosophical perspective, one asks to what extent ideologies maintain and impose conceptual patterns of thought by introducing, supporting, and adapting fundamental patterns of thinking metaphorically. The question is to what extent the ideology fashion and refashion the idea of the nation as a container with borders, and how enemies and outsiders are represented. Some cognitive scholars have attempted to take on board

1386-472: A tornado. Based on his analysis, Jaynes claims that metaphors not only enhance description, but "increase enormously our powers of perception...and our understanding of [the world], and literally create new objects". Metaphors are most frequently compared with similes . A metaphor asserts the objects in the comparison are identical on the point of comparison, while a simile merely asserts a similarity through use of words such as like or as . For this reason

1463-494: A truth ' , and the suffix -logia , denoting ' the study or logic of ' . The etymon refers to the predicate (i.e. stem or root ) from which a later word or morpheme derives. For example, the Latin word candidus , which means ' white ' , is the etymon of English candid . Relationships are often less transparent, however. English place names such as Winchester , Gloucester , Tadcaster share in different modern forms

1540-653: A word or phrase from one domain of experience is applied to another domain". She argues that since reality is mediated by the language we use to describe it, the metaphors we use shape the world and our interactions to it. The term metaphor is used to describe more basic or general aspects of experience and cognition: Some theorists have suggested that metaphors are not merely stylistic, but are also cognitively important.In Metaphors We Live By , George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue that metaphors are pervasive in everyday life, not only in language but also in thought and action. A common definition of metaphor can be described as

1617-519: Is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to create a likeness or an analogy. Analysts group metaphors with other types of figurative language, such as antithesis , hyperbole , metonymy , and simile . “Figurative language examples include “similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, allusions, and idioms.”” One of

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1694-415: Is an open question whether synesthesia experiences are a sensory version of metaphor, the "source" domain being the presented stimulus, such as a musical tone, and the target domain, being the experience in another modality, such as color. Art theorist Robert Vischer argued that when we look at a painting, we "feel ourselves into it" by imagining our body in the posture of a nonhuman or inanimate object in

1771-459: Is any coherent organization of experience. For example, we have coherently organized knowledge about journeys that we rely on in understanding life. Lakoff and Johnson greatly contributed to establishing the importance of conceptual metaphor as a framework for thinking in language, leading scholars to investigate the original ways in which writers used novel metaphors and question the fundamental frameworks of thinking in conceptual metaphors. From

1848-500: Is fuzzy' and 'the difference between them might be described (metaphorically) as the distance between things being compared'. Metaphor is distinct from metonymy , as the two concepts embody different fundamental modes of thought . Metaphor works by bringing together concepts from different conceptual domains, whereas metonymy uses one element from a given domain to refer to another closely related element. A metaphor creates new links between otherwise distinct conceptual domains, whereas

1925-407: Is its own egg. Furthermore, the metaphor magpie is employed because, according to Zuckermann, hybridic Israeli displays the characteristics of a magpie, "stealing" from languages such as Arabic and English . A dead metaphor is a metaphor in which the sense of a transferred image has become absent. The phrases "to grasp a concept" and "to gather what you've understood" use physical action as

2002-602: Is known. The earliest of attested etymologies can be found in Vedic literature in the philosophical explanations of the Brahmanas , Aranyakas , and Upanishads . The analyses of Sanskrit grammar done by the previously mentioned linguists involved extensive studies on the etymology (called Nirukta or Vyutpatti in Sanskrit) of Sanskrit words, because the ancient Indians considered sound and speech itself to be sacred and, for them,

2079-399: Is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold" and "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want". Some recent linguistic theories view all language in essence as metaphorical. The etymology of a word may uncover a metaphorical usage which has since become obscured with persistent use - such as for example

2156-473: Is not readily obvious that the English word set is related to the word sit (the former is originally a causative formation of the latter). It is even less obvious that bless is related to blood (the former was originally a derivative with the meaning "to mark with blood"). Semantic change may also occur. For example, the English word bead originally meant "prayer". It acquired its modern meaning through

2233-519: Is often traced to Sir William Jones , a Welsh philologist living in India , who in 1782 observed the genetic relationship between Sanskrit , Greek and Latin . Jones published his The Sanscrit Language in 1786, laying the foundation for the field of Indo-European linguistics . The study of etymology in Germanic philology was introduced by Rasmus Christian Rask in the early 19th century and elevated to

2310-404: Is powerfully destructive' through the paraphrand of physical and emotional destruction; another person might understand the metaphor as 'Pat can spin out of control'. In the latter case, the paraphier of 'spinning motion' has become the paraphrand 'psychological spin', suggesting an entirely new metaphor for emotional unpredictability, a possibly apt description for a human being hardly applicable to

2387-547: Is the most absurd, which derives this word from pons, and assigns the priests the title of bridge-makers. The sacrifices performed on the bridge were amongst the most sacred and ancient, and the keeping and repairing of the bridge attached, like any other public sacred office, to the priesthood. Isidore of Seville compiled a volume of etymologies to illuminate the triumph of religion. Each saint's legend in Jacobus de Varagine 's Legenda Aurea begins with an etymological discourse on

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2464-435: Is the study of the origin and evolution of words, including their constituent units of sound and of meaning , across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics , etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. Most directly tied to historical linguistics , philology , and semiotics , it additionally draws upon comparative semantics , morphology , pragmatics , and phonetics in order to attempt

2541-405: Is using metaphor . There is no physical link between a language and a bird. The reason the metaphors phoenix and cuckoo are used is that on the one hand hybridic Israeli is based on Hebrew , which, like a phoenix, rises from the ashes; and on the other hand, hybridic Israeli is based on Yiddish , which like a cuckoo, lays its egg in the nest of another bird, tricking it to believe that it

2618-426: Is war" and "time is money." These metaphors are widely used in various contexts to describe personal meaning. In addition, the authors suggest that communication can be viewed as a machine: "Communication is not what one does with the machine, but is the machine itself." Moreover, experimental evidence shows that "priming" people with material from one area can influence how they perform tasks and interpret language in

2695-550: The Brain", takes on board the dual problem of conceptual metaphor as a framework implicit in the language as a system and the way individuals and ideologies negotiate conceptual metaphors. Neural biological research suggests some metaphors are innate, as demonstrated by reduced metaphorical understanding in psychopathy. James W. Underhill, in Creating Worldviews: Ideology, Metaphor & Language (Edinburgh UP), considers

2772-421: The English word " window ", etymologically equivalent to "wind eye". The word  metaphor itself is a metaphor, coming from a Greek term meaning 'transference (of ownership)'. The user of a metaphor alters the reference of the word, "carrying" it from one semantic "realm" to another. The new meaning of the word might derive from an analogy between the two semantic realms, but also from other reasons such as

2849-604: The European baroque, its relation to the classical, and the American baroque. Lezama Lima died in 1976 at age 65 and was buried in the Colon Cemetery, Havana . He was influential for Cuban and Puerto Rican writers of his generation and the next, such as Virgilio Piñera , Reinaldo Arenas , Fernando Velázquez Medina, René Marqués , and Giannina Braschi , who depict his life and works in their writing. Metaphor A metaphor

2926-621: The Non-Moral Sense . Some sociologists have found his essay useful for thinking about metaphors used in society and for reflecting on their own use of metaphor. Sociologists of religion note the importance of metaphor in religious worldviews, and that it is impossible to think sociologically about religion without metaphor. Archived 19 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine Etymology Etymology ( / ˌ ɛ t ɪ ˈ m ɒ l ə dʒ i / , ET -im- OL -ə-jee )

3003-402: The adoption of " loanwords " from other languages); word formation such as derivation and compounding ; and onomatopoeia and sound symbolism (i.e., the creation of imitative words such as "click" or "grunt"). While the origin of newly emerged words is often more or less transparent, it tends to become obscured through time due to sound change or semantic change. Due to sound change , it

3080-425: The analysis of morphological derivation within a language in studies that are not concerned with historical linguistics and that do not cross the language barrier. Etymologists apply a number of methods to study the origins of words, some of which are: Etymological theory recognizes that words originate through a limited number of basic mechanisms, the most important of which are language change , borrowing (i.e.,

3157-433: The back-burner , regurgitates them in discussions, and cooks up explanations, hoping they do not seem half-baked . A convenient short-hand way of capturing this view of metaphor is the following: Conceptual Domain (A) is Conceptual Domain (B), which is what is called a conceptual metaphor . A conceptual metaphor consists of two conceptual domains, in which one domain is understood in terms of another. A conceptual domain

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3234-528: The city of Marianao where his father was a colonel, Lezama lived through some of the most turbulent times of Cuba's history, fighting against the Machado dictatorship. His literary output includes the semi-autobiographical, baroque novel Paradiso (1966), the story of a young man and his struggles with his mysterious illness, the death of his father, and his developing sensuality and poetic sensibilities. Lezama Lima also edited several anthologies of Cuban poetry and

3311-425: The context of any language system which claims to embody richness and depth of understanding. In addition, he clarifies the limitations associated with a literal interpretation of the mechanistic Cartesian and Newtonian depictions of the universe as little more than a "machine" – a concept which continues to underlie much of the scientific materialism which prevails in the modern Western world. He argues further that

3388-587: The course of creating fictions through the use of metaphor we can also perceive and manipulate props into new improvised representations of something entirely different in a game of "make-believe". Suddenly the properties of the props themselves take on primary importance. In the process the participants in the game may be only partially conscious of the "prop oriented" nature of the game itself. Metaphors can map experience between two nonlinguistic realms. Musicologist Leonard B. Meyer demonstrated how purely rhythmic and harmonic events can express human emotions. It

3465-427: The creation of metaphors at the end of his Poetics : "But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars." Baroque literary theorist Emanuele Tesauro defines the metaphor "the most witty and acute, the most strange and marvelous,

3542-440: The development of various imaginative ends. In "content oriented" games, users derive value from such props as a result of the intrinsic fictional content which they help to create through their participation in the game. As familiar examples of such content oriented games, Walton points to putting on a play of Hamlet or "playing cops and robbers". Walton further argues, however, that not all games conform to this characteristic. In

3619-661: The distortion of the semantic realm - for example in sarcasm. The English word metaphor derives from the 16th-century Old French word métaphore , which comes from the Latin metaphora , 'carrying over', and in turn from the Greek μεταφορά ( metaphorá ), 'transference (of ownership)', from μεταφέρω ( metapherō ), 'to carry over, to transfer' and that from μετά ( meta ), 'behind, along with, across' + φέρω ( pherō ), 'to bear, to carry'. The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936) by rhetorician I. A. Richards describes

3696-448: The first to make a comprehensive analysis of linguistics and etymology. The study of Sanskrit etymology has provided Western scholars with the basis of historical linguistics and modern etymology. Four of the most famous Sanskrit linguists are: These linguists were not the earliest Sanskrit grammarians, however. They followed a line of ancient grammarians of Sanskrit who lived several centuries earlier like Sakatayana of whom very little

3773-432: The formulation of metaphors at the center of a "Game of Make Believe," which is regulated by tacit norms and rules. These "principles of generation" serve to determine several aspects of the game which include: what is considered to be fictional or imaginary, as well as the fixed function which is assumed by both objects and people who interact in the game. Walton refers to such generators as "props" which can serve as means to

3850-403: The general terms ground and figure to denote the tenor and the vehicle. Cognitive linguistics uses the terms target and source , respectively. Psychologist Julian Jaynes coined the terms metaphrand and metaphier , plus two new concepts, paraphrand and paraphier . Metaphrand is equivalent to the metaphor-theory terms tenor , target , and ground . Metaphier is equivalent to

3927-436: The genus, since both old age and stubble are [species of the genus of] things that have lost their bloom." Metaphors, according to Aristotle, have "qualities of the exotic and the fascinating; but at the same time we recognize that strangers do not have the same rights as our fellow citizens". Educational psychologist Andrew Ortony gives more explicit detail: "Metaphors are necessary as a communicative device because they allow

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4004-528: The idea that different languages have evolved radically different concepts and conceptual metaphors, while others hold to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis . German philologist Wilhelm von Humboldt contributed significantly to this debate on the relationship between culture, language, and linguistic communities. Humboldt remains, however, relatively unknown in English-speaking nations. Andrew Goatly , in "Washing

4081-437: The language. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about forms that are too old for any direct information to be available. By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method , linguists can make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way, word roots in many European languages, for example, can be traced back to

4158-450: The long poem "Muerte de Narciso," brought him national acclaim at the age of twenty-seven and established his well-wrought style and classical subject matter. In addition to his poems and novels, Lezama wrote many essays on figures of world literature such as Stéphane Mallarmé , Valéry , Góngora and Rimbaud as well as on Latin American baroque aesthetics. Most notably the essays published as La Expresión Americana lay out his vision of

4235-640: The magazines Verbum and Orígenes , presiding as the patriarch of Cuban letters for most of his later years. Lezama Lima spent little time outside of his home country, making a trip to Mexico in 1949 and Jamaica in 1950). Nevertheless, Lezama's poetry, essays and two novels draw images and ideas from a vast array of world cultures and historical time periods. The Baroque style that he forged relied equally upon his Góngora -influenced syntax and his stunning constellations of unlikely images, which often drew from Ancient Chinese and Egyptian philosophical texts and mythological narratives. Lezama Lima's first published work,

4312-407: The metaphor-theory terms vehicle , figure , and source . In a simple metaphor, an obvious attribute of the metaphier exactly characterizes the metaphrand (e.g. "the ship plowed the seas"). With an inexact metaphor, however, a metaphier might have associated attributes or nuances – its paraphiers – that enrich the metaphor because they "project back" to the metaphrand, potentially creating new ideas –

4389-438: The most commonly cited examples of a metaphor in English literature comes from the " All the world's a stage " monologue from As You Like It : All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances And one man in his time plays many parts, His Acts being seven ages. At first, the infant... — William Shakespeare , As You Like It , 2/7 This quotation expresses

4466-479: The most pleasant and useful, the most eloquent and fecund part of the human intellect ". There is, he suggests, something divine in metaphor: the world itself is God's poem and metaphor is not just a literary or rhetorical figure but an analytic tool that can penetrate the mysteries of God and His creation. Friedrich Nietzsche makes metaphor the conceptual center of his early theory of society in On Truth and Lies in

4543-426: The obvious, and actual "bridge-builder": The priests, called Pontifices.... have the name of Pontifices from potens , powerful because they attend the service of the gods, who have power and command overall. Others make the word refer to exceptions of impossible cases; the priests were to perform all the duties possible; if anything lays beyond their power, the exception was not to be cavilled. The most common opinion

4620-730: The origin of the Indo-European language family . Even though etymological research originated from the philological tradition, much current etymological research is done on language families where little or no early documentation is available, such as Uralic and Austronesian . The word etymology is derived from the Ancient Greek word ἐτυμολογία ([ἐτυμολογία] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) ), itself from ἔτυμον ([ἔτυμον] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) ), meaning ' true sense or sense of

4697-477: The painting. For example, the painting The Lonely Tree by Caspar David Friedrich shows a tree with contorted, barren limbs. Looking at the painting, some recipients may imagine their limbs in a similarly contorted and barren shape, evoking a feeling of strain and distress. Nonlinguistic metaphors may be the foundation of our experience of visual and musical art, as well as dance and other art forms. In historical onomasiology or in historical linguistics ,

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4774-412: The paraphrands – associated thereafter with the metaphrand or even leading to a new metaphor. For example, in the metaphor "Pat is a tornado", the metaphrand is Pat ; the metaphier is tornado . As metaphier, tornado carries paraphiers such as power, storm and wind, counterclockwise motion, and danger, threat, destruction, etc. The metaphoric meaning of tornado is inexact: one might understand that 'Pat

4851-547: The philosophical concept of "substance" or "substratum" has limited meaning at best and that physicalist theories of the universe depend upon mechanistic metaphors which are drawn from deductive logic in the development of their hypotheses. By interpreting such metaphors literally, Turbayne argues that modern man has unknowingly fallen victim to only one of several metaphorical models of the universe which may be more beneficial in nature. In his book In Other Shoes: Music, Metaphor, Empathy, Existence Kendall Walton also places

4928-433: The practice of counting the recitation of prayers by using beads. The search for meaningful origins for familiar or strange words is far older than the modern understanding of linguistic evolution and the relationships of languages, which began no earlier than the 18th century. From Antiquity through the 17th century, from Pāṇini to Pindar to Sir Thomas Browne , etymology had been a form of witty wordplay, in which

5005-455: The relationship between two languages on the basis of similarity of grammar and lexicon was made in 1770 by the Hungarian, János Sajnovics , when he attempted to demonstrate the relationship between Sami and Hungarian (work that was later extended to the whole Finno-Ugric language family in 1799 by his fellow countryman, Samuel Gyarmathi ). The origin of modern historical linguistics

5082-510: The saint's name: Lucy is said of light, and light is beauty in beholding, after that S. Ambrose saith: The nature of light is such, she is gracious in beholding, she spreadeth over all without lying down, she passeth in going right without crooking by right long line; and it is without dilation of tarrying, and therefore it is showed the blessed Lucy hath beauty of virginity without any corruption; essence of charity without disordinate love; rightful going and devotion to God, without squaring out of

5159-419: The same context. An implicit metaphor has no specified tenor, although the vehicle is present. M. H. Abrams offers the following as an example of an implicit metaphor: "That reed was too frail to survive the storm of its sorrows". The reed is the vehicle for the implicit tenor, someone's death, and the storm is the vehicle for the person's sorrows. Metaphor can serve as a device for persuading an audience of

5236-402: The same language. Although they have the same etymological root, they tend to have different phonological forms, and to have entered the language through different routes. A root is the source of related words within a single language (no language barrier is crossed). Similar to the distinction between etymon and root , a nuanced distinction can sometimes be made between a descendant and

5313-408: The sixteenth century. Etymologicum genuinum is a grammatical encyclopedia edited at Constantinople in the ninth century, one of several similar Byzantine works. The thirteenth-century Legenda Aurea , as written by Jacobus de Varagine , begins each vita of a saint with a fanciful excursus in the form of an etymology. The Sanskrit linguists and grammarians of ancient India were

5390-488: The supposed origins of words were creatively imagined to satisfy contemporary requirements; for example, the Greek poet Pindar (born in approximately 522 BCE) employed inventive etymologies to flatter his patrons. Plutarch employed etymologies insecurely based on fancied resemblances in sounds . Isidore of Seville 's Etymologiae was an encyclopedic tracing of "first things" that remained uncritically in use in Europe until

5467-427: The term etymon instead. A reflex will sometimes be described simply as a descendant , derivative or derived from an etymon (but see below). Cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Doublets or etymological twins or twinlings (or possibly triplets, and so forth) are specifically cognates within

5544-438: The transfer of coherent chunks of characteristics -- perceptual, cognitive, emotional and experiential – from a vehicle which is known to a topic which is less so. In so doing they circumvent the problem of specifying one by one each of the often unnameable and innumerable characteristics; they avoid discretizing the perceived continuity of experience and are thus closer to experience and consequently more vivid and memorable." As

5621-535: The user's argument or thesis, the so-called rhetorical metaphor. Aristotle writes in his work the Rhetoric that metaphors make learning pleasant: "To learn easily is naturally pleasant to all people, and words signify something, so whatever words create knowledge in us are the pleasantest." When discussing Aristotle's Rhetoric , Jan Garret stated "metaphor most brings about learning; for when [Homer] calls old age "stubble", he creates understanding and knowledge through

5698-519: The view that metaphors may also be described as examples of a linguistic "category mistake" which have the potential of leading unsuspecting users into considerable obfuscation of thought within the realm of epistemology. Included among them is the Australian philosopher Colin Murray Turbayne . In his book The Myth of Metaphor , Turbayne argues that the use of metaphor is an essential component within

5775-729: The way individual speech adopts and reinforces certain metaphoric paradigms. This involves a critique of both communist and fascist discourse. Underhill's studies are situated in Czech and German, which allows him to demonstrate the ways individuals are thinking both within and resisting the modes by which ideologies seek to appropriate key concepts such as "the people", "the state", "history", and "struggle". Though metaphors can be considered to be "in" language, Underhill's chapter on French, English and ethnolinguistics demonstrates that language or languages cannot be conceived of in anything other than metaphoric terms. Several other philosophers have embraced

5852-464: The way; right long line by continual work without negligence of slothful tarrying. In Lucy is said, the way of light. Etymology in the modern sense emerged in the late 18th-century European academia, within the context of the wider " Age of Enlightenment ", although preceded by 17th century pioneers such as Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn , Gerardus Vossius , Stephen Skinner , Elisha Coles , and William Wotton . The first known systematic attempt to prove

5929-679: The words of the sacred Vedas contained deep encoding of the mysteries of the soul and God. One of the earliest philosophical texts of the Classical Greek period to address etymology was the Socratic dialogue Cratylus ( c.  360 BCE ) by Plato . During much of the dialogue, Socrates makes guesses as to the origins of many words, including the names of the gods. In his Odes Pindar spins complimentary etymologies to flatter his patrons. Plutarch ( Life of Numa Pompilius ) spins an etymology for pontifex , while explicitly dismissing

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