Faith
Faith ultimately comes from Proto Indo European bhidh, meaning something like “persuade” or “compel”. When bhidh came into Latin, it became fidere, “to trust”, presumably because something sufficiently compelling would be trustworthy…
The nominal form was fides, which became feid in Old French and faith in English in 1250. It wasn’t used in a Christian sense until 1382, although apparently religions have been called “faiths” since about 1300.
Faith and many words that sound similar make up an interesting family. It begins with unfettered freedom (”f”) that is flexible and spreads out wide (long “a”), but is then drawn up along a “perilous path” (”th”). The idea appears to be that faith is the state of having one’s beliefs, which a priori are completely free and flexible, constrained onto a particular path. Faith, in other words, means limiting your beliefs.
Other words that start out with the “FAY” sound seem to represent a similar process of starting out unconstrained, and then limiting or blocking the energy in some way:
- fate: a free path is directed toward a specific target.
- fade: something that had been going along unconstrained is brought to a decision / door (ending).
- fail: something that had been going strong is dispersed into something shapeless.
- fey: here, with no final consonant, the initial freedom and expansion is not ended…
May 15th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Word, man!
I am loving these satisfying little daily digs and fieldtrips through the archaeology of language.
I believe magic is found in the mundane — all around us, in the most common places. The object of focus is everyday, but the lens you look through powerful.
Are you familiar with synesthesia?
For most of my life I’ve witnessed a relationship between typography and topography, between serif and drag — characters are indeed characters — in every sense — words are on-going family dramas with juicy histories…
Your Word of the Day is like being treated to a daily striptease by the hot little Word nextdoor.
: )
May 15th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I’ve recently been discussing with a friend the difference between having ‘faith’ in something, and just ‘knowing’ something. This helps me further clarify the point I was trying to make to her… that perhaps to have faith is to believe that something is so… whereas to know is where something IS so.
Having faith in God is therefor different from knowing God.
One is a belief, one is a direct experience.
Do our beliefs, or our faiths, therefore limit or block our ability to KNOW what is?
Hmm….
May 15th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
[...] my other blog, the Druid Journal Word of the Day, I recently wrote about the word “faith“. The upshot of the discussion there is that faith is constrained belief – that is, in [...]
May 16th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Hey Slade, good gracious! I had no idea my words were being so naughty while I was away…
I do know a bit about synesthesia, yeah. I have it myself to a degree — not in quite the way you describe… But as you know, I’m very very visually oriented, and part of the way that manifests is that I see colors associated with letters, numbers, words, and abstract concepts of all sorts. “4″ is brick red… “g” is forest green… “a” is yellow-white… “god” is a sort of dirty brown… and so on.
I even have colors for people, once I get to know them well enough. Slade, you’re slate-gray, probably because of the Slade-slate connection.
Kara-Leah — since I know you’re reading! — you’re yellow-green — probably because of the colors on your site.
Anyway, I’m so glad you’re enjoying the words, Slade! What did you think of “shift”?
May 16th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Kara-Leah, there is an absolutely essential difference between “faith” or “belief” vs. “know”, and it has to do with presuppositions. A presupposition is something that has to be true before you’re even allowed to make the statement, regardless of whether the statement turns out to be true or false.
The classic example of presupposition is the trial lawyer who asks the defendant, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” The question presupposes that the defendant has been beating his wife; so whether he answers yes or no, he’s incriminating himself.
Similarly, if I say “I know that you live in New Zealand”, that presupposes that you DO live in New Zealand. If you happened not to be living in New Zealand, the statement would be so wrong that it wouldn’t even be false — it would just be an error all around. Saying, however, that “I believe you live in New Zealand” or “I have faith that you live in New Zealand” makes no presuppositions like that.
So if you say “I know X”, X absolutely has to be the case, or else you’re simply using the language incorrectly. But this leaves entirely open the question of how you know X is the case in the first place…
As for whether our beliefs can block our knowledge of what IS — I personally think our beliefs constrain about 95% of what we experience. About 95% of what you’ll notice in your life fits in with what you already believe. The question is whether you’re going to ignore that final 5%, or explore it and change your beliefs as necessary…