Thursday, October 12, 2017

Language of Confusion: Feelings of Worry

These feelings certainly feel appropriate for Halloween season. At least to me.

Worry
Worry used a lot as a noun these days, but it didn’t appear as one until 1804. Before that it was just a verb, coming from the Old English wyrgan, which actually means to strangle. It comes from the Proto Germanic wurgjan and Proto Indo European wer-, turn or bend, a word that’s the origin of a ton of other words. Just so many.

Anxiety
One of my least favorite words, anxiety showed up in the early-mid sixteenth century from the classical Latin anxietatem, anxiety. Anxious didn’t show up until a century later, coming from the Latin anxius, worried, which is related to angere, writhe, and anguere, snake. Um, the verb snake, not the reptile. Although I think that’s where the name for the reptile comes from. Anyway, the word can be further traced back to the Proto Indo European angh-, which is where we get anger, and also angst. Speaking of which...

Angst
Angst is a very young word, having shown up in 1944. It started as a term in psychology that came from the German word angst, which just means anxiety. And as I said, it can be traced to angh-.

Nervous
Nervous showed up in the fifteenth century, where it meant “affecting the sinews”, which apparently can mean a tendon or asource of power (I’ve heard that word but I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it used). Of course it’s related to nerve, coming from the classical Latin nervosus and nervus, which means sinew. That word seems to be popping up a lot here.

Sources

4 comments:

  1. I guess affecting the sinews is a worry reaction.

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  2. I'm in a high anxiety zone at the moment.

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  3. Well, if you're worrying about something, it's kind of like you're strangling yourself.

    ReplyDelete

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