Beauty
Beauty comes from the Proto Indo European root deu, which according to my American Heritage meant “to do, perform, show favor, revere”, though it’s beyond me to know how one root could mean all those things. It’s the ancestor of Latin bonus “good”, which gave us everything from bonanza to debonair, and others such as benediction, benefit, belladonna, embellish, and benign. From Latin it went to Old French as biaute, and entered Middle English as beaute.
Beauty starts out with a bang (”b”) and quickly hits a second consonant, “y”, even though you’d never guess it from the spelling. (Without the “y”, of course, beauty would just be booty.) The “y” gives the explosive “b” the additional qualities of energy, trust, and youth. This vibrancy is fast, flowing easily (long “u”), and resolves with a call, a temptation, a path forward (”t”). The last syllable, a long “e”, extends the energy without end.
Beauty, then, is something that bursts upon you (no wonder we sometimes call something beautiful striking!) and carries you away — calling to you, tempting you forward, into infinity.
May 18th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
“(Without the “yâ€, of course, beauty would just be booty.)”
Which, depending on hwo you look at it, could be quite attractive…that line of yours made me laugh.
Some words I would like to see here:
clairvoyant, mystic, purple, envy, truth, spirit(uality), yoga, tome, book
Thanks!
–J
July 25th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Hmmm … what, then, about the phonosemantics of “booty”?
Two other words I’d like to see the phonosemantics of:
“ermine” and “vermin.”
August 4th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I’ll put them in the queue, Kate.
Booty, briefly, is just like beauty, but lacks the connotations of energy, trust, and youth. In other words, it is explosive, fast and flowing, and results in a temptation, a call forward along a path; and the final syllable leaves the energy open without conclusion.
So here is an interesting thing: booty differs in two very important ways from beauty. First, booty is a much ruder and coarser word; but this is not reflected in the phonosemantics. Phonosemantics says nothing about polite society. Second, booty refers to a specific body part that excites temptation, while beauty refers to an abstraction that excites temptation. But again, this difference is not reflected in the phonosemantics. Abstract or concrete, phonosemantics doesn’t care. For me the most interesting question is: does this mean that Spirit doesn’t care about abtract vs. concrete, and rude/coarse vs. polite society? Perhaps not.