Archive • Etymologies • Buttondown

Obscurity, Mystery, Glory

January 6, 2025

Obscurity, Mystery, Glory Adoration of the Magi, by Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi, via "Obscurity" is the opposite of "clarity". It is the abstract noun...

Soul Work, or the Metaphysics of Care

November 18, 2024

Soul Work, or the Metaphysics of Care Jean-François Millet, Gleaners, via "Work" now means primarily "action, labour, activity" or "an instance of this."...

The Clarity of Spiritual Beauty

February 23, 2024

The Clarity of Spiritual Beauty The Transfiguration, by Raphael (1516–1520), via The Latin adjective clarus means "clear, bright, shining, brilliant." It is...

The Facts about "Artifact"

January 11, 2024

The Facts about "Artifact" Terracotta lēkythos (oil flask), attributed to the Amasis Painter, ca. 550–530 BCE, via An artifact is "an object made or modified...

Fighting the Good Fight

December 12, 2023

Fighting the Good Fight Archaeological Museum in Herakleion. Representation of a chariot race on a clay hydria. 7th c. B.C., via Greetings! And my thanks for...

Above Suspicion

January 30, 2023

Above Suspicion Thomas Aquinas by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, 1650 Yesterday was the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225--1274). His most famous work, though...

School, Work, and Leisure

School, Work, and Leisure Plato’s Academy, as depicted in a first-century B.C. mosaic from the the House of T. Siminius Stephanus, Pompeii (National...

February 13, 2022

The Word Sower Raphael, St. Paul Preaching at Athens (1515), Royal Collection of the United Kingdom January 25 was the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul,...

Living Tradition

December 25, 2021

Living Tradition St. Isidore of Seville writes of the value of etymology as follows: Etymology is the derivation of words, when the force of a word or name...

In Search of Word Lovers

In Search of Word Lovers It is not easy to explain what I do. Or, rather, it isn't easy to find a single completely satisfactory name for what I do. The...

Lasting Things My late friend and colleague Dr. Brendan McGuire was fond of quoting the following by St. Prosper of Aquitaine. Even if the wounds of this...

Et in Arcadia Ego

Etymologies Et in Arcadia Ego The title to Book One of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited is the Latin phrase “Et in Arcadia Ego”—but the interpretation of...

In Praise of Alphabets

February 6, 2021

Etymologies (Teachers, see the section at the bottom for recent Classics teaching job notices.) Μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος … "Sing, goddess, the wrath...

Christmas and Philanthrōpia

January 6, 2021

Etymologies Titus 3:4--7 . . . when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in...