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.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 7:17 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.