A quick note of explanation: I haven’t been able to post for several days due to the Blue Screen of Death. (Oo! Death would be a good one to do, wouldn’t it?) Everything is fine, now, and I expect to be back on schedule henceforward.)

Sacrifice comes from Latin sacrificium, meaning “sacred action” (from sacra, “sacred”, and ficium, “to do”). It was used to refer to the performance of any priestly duties. Since these duties almost always involved giving something to the gods, sacrifice came to mean, first, giving something up to Spirit, and then later (in the late 1500’s in English) giving something up in general.

As for sacra “sacred”, it derives ultimately from Proto Indo European sak, meaning “sanctify”; and it is the basis for consecrate, sacerdotal, saint, sanctum, sacrosanct, and sanctify.

Sacrifice’s primary syllable, sac, is identical with that ancient Proto Indo European root sak from 8,000 years ago. It indicates directed, balanced energy (”sa”) pouring into a container (”k”); metaphorically, then, the energy is the sacrifice, and Spirit is the container. Remarkably, the same phonosemantics work for the rather more mundane word sack…

Thanks to Erik for suggesting this word of the day.

From Proto Indo European gal, “to shout, shriek, call out”; it’s the ancestor of clatter as well, and, oddly enough, glasnost (which is derived from an obsolete Russian word for “voice”). In Old Norse gal became kalla, “to cry loudly”, which became ceallian in Old English.

Once in English it began a strange adventure in meaning shifts. From 1250, it came to also mean “to name”, and the meaning “to visit” shortly afterwards. The sense of calling as a vocation is derived from the King James bible, I Corinthians ch. 7 v. 20: Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.

In clairvoyant we saw that “cl” is a container filled with light or air; the addition of the short “o” attaches that container to the spiritual Source energy. It’s perhaps a metaphor for the large, energy-filled, vibrating volume created by our mouths, throats and lungs when we call out — and the sense that these self-created vibrations expand to fill the world around us, as well.

Thanks to Ali for suggesting this word of the day.

Jason is one of those rare, remarkable cases where two words are merged into one.

The first Jason comes ultimately from the Hebrew name Yehoshua, meaning “Yahweh saves”; it is the same name that gave rise to the names Joshua (Anglicized) and Jesus (Latinized). (Jesus’s actual name would have been pronounced Yeshua; Jesus is the Latin version.) A large number of Jews living in Greece were named Yehoshua, so that the name was eventually borrowed into Greek as Eason. Eason came into Latin as Jason, and thence into English.

The second Jason comes from native Greek Iason, possibly related to iasthai, “to heal” (of uncertain origin). This is the Jason of Argonaut fame.

Regardless of origin, Jason starts out with a troubled doorway or difficult decision (”j”) and then spreads out wide and flexibly (long “a”) and converges into targeted energy (”s”). The suggestion of a target is further strengthened by the final syllabic “n”, narrowing towards a goal.