A Year of Humility (II): Definitions The First

 As a writer and reader, words not only matter to me but are fascinating to me.  As someone who loves to study foreign languages (if he does not end up speaking them very well), what a language has and does not have for words and concepts and how it expresses those concepts tell one a great deal about the culture and thought processes without a single word about the actual culture and thought processes.

Thus, rather than start from the typical "Here is what the Greek/Hebrew says, this is where it appears, and this is the word we use for it", I would like to reverse the order and start where we are now and work backwards.

Humility, were you to look it up in your red hardback Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College Edition (1982), would be defined as "The state or quality; absence of pride or self assertion".   Were you to go back a page to page 683, you could look up humble:

"Humble:  1.  having or showing a consciousness of one's defects or shortcomings; not proud; not self-assertive; 2.  low in condition, rank, or position; lowly; unpretentious.  Verbal Form (-bled, -bling): 1. to lower in condition, rank, or position; 2 to lower in pride; make modest or humble in mind".

You would also find right below this:

"Synonymy:  humble, in a favorable sense, suggests an unassuming character in which there is an absence of pride and assertiveness (a humble genius) and, unfavorably connotes and almost abject lack of respect."  Words presented as synonyms include lowly (an older equivalent to humble with no unfavorable connotations), meek, and modest.

Finally, the entry would tell you the world entered the English language during the period of Middle English as humilitte, which is derived from Old French and ultimately Latin.

Fair enough.  There are many, many terms in Modern English that we ultimately derive from Latin via Latin directly or as a parting gift from the Norman Conquest.  But it always makes me wonder:  what was the original Old English term.

As an example text going forward for this discussion (and next week's), I will use Luke 14:11:  "For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted".

The Old English (from the circa 990 A.D. West Saxon Gospel)  reads:

"For-ðam aelc þem hine up-ahefð byð genyðerud (ond) se þe hine niðereð se beoð up-ahafen."

Literally, "For every one that lifts himself up (up-ahefð) will be brought low/put down (genyðerud) and the one that brings himself low (niðereð), he will be lifted up (ahafen)".

So to the Anglo-Saxon mind, the idea of "humble" was that of being made to lower one's self - whether in physical manner or in social standing.  In a society that valued in its literature and culture warrior prowess and bravery, this must have seemed like a very foreign - and not desirable - concept.

So if the Anglo-Saxons saw being "humble" as lowering one's self (as opposed to lifting one's self up), where did they get that idea from?  Stay tuned for next week, where we reach farther back into (linguistic) history.