Language of Confusion: Whatever The Case May Be, Part III

Okay, this is the last week of looking at words related to case (situation), the one that’s from the Proto Indo European kad-, to fall. Prepare for things to get weird.

First, occasion showed up in the late fourteenth century from the Old French ochaison/occasion, from the classical Latin occasionem, opportunity. It’s from the verb occidere, which means things like fall down or go down (one definition even has it at to kill). The o- is from ob-, down, and the -cidere comes from cadere, to fall. So that part makes sense, although I’m lost on how it got to “opportunity”. Oh, and the word Occident is from the same place. Considering that word means “western part”, I’m even more confused.

Next, cadence. It showed up in the late fourteenth century, meaning rhythm in prose or verse, coming from the Middle French cadence, and Old Italian cadenza—conclusion of a movement in music. That’s from the Vulgar Latin cadentia, from the classical Latin cadens, falling, from cadere. So because the end of a musical movement is “a falling”, we have cadence. Also related is the word cadaver, which showed up in the late fourteenth century from the classical Latin cadaver, a dead body, and wow, we didn’t change that word at all in nearly seven hundred years. Anyway, it’s thought to be from cadere in the sense that when someone is dead, they fall down. They’re a cadaver.

That also leads us to the next words we’ll be looking at. Decay showed up in the fifteenth century, from the Anglo French and Old North French decair and Vulgar Latin decadere. That’s also the origin word for decadence, which seems to just be the same word with de- in front of it, but of course it’s not. It showed up in the sixteenth century meaning deteriorated condition—it wasn’t until 1970 that things changed to meaning highly self-indulgent! Also, it was first used that way in reference to desserts. Anyway! Decadence comes from the Medieval Latin decadentia, decay, which is from decadere, to decay, with de- meaning apart or down. It’s to fall apart. Well, I do fall apart in front of a dessert…

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Omniglot

Dictionary.com

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

Dictionary of Medieval Latin

Encyclopaedia Britannica

University of Ottawa, Canada

Fordham University