Wednesday, April 22, 2015

A-to-Z Challenge: S

Safe! No clever things to add!



Safe first showed up in the early fourteenth century, from the Old French sauf and classical Latin salvus, saved. Though it looks it, salvus is not related to salve, but rather salus, safety, which also gave us salute and solid, weirdly enough. Salvus/salus can also be traced back to Proto Indo European, where it’s solwos, from sol, or whole. And something that’s whole is safe. Usually. I mean, something that isn’t whole can still be safe. But it’s better to be whole, right?

Sources

9 comments:

  1. Usually better to be whole, definitely :) Solid always sounds like a safe word.
    Tasha
    Tasha's Thinkings | Wittegen Press | FB3X (AC)

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  2. But can you keep the whole hole safe?

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  3. Definitely better to be whole. No holes, please!

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  4. You've wholly explained how we became safe.

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  5. Better to be whole and have a safe to keep it in :)

    betty

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  6. Solid definitely means safe. That's why homies belonging to urban gang collectives shout these two words at each other to indicate respect and brotherhood within the posse.

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  7. Andrew's answer has me a bit tongue tied.

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  8. So, it's safe to salute something solid?

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Please validate me.