Etymology:
The Truth in the Trees By Valentin Kostelnik
Thousands of years ago, the proto-Germanic people, who built much of the language we speak today, lived in the endless beech forests of northern Europe. As they began writing, they would carve letters into soft beech bark, and, over time, any object with writing on it became known as a “beech.” Eventually, the sound “beech” morphed into “book.” Side note: books are typically made out of paper which is, sensibly, named after the Egyptian plant papyrus. This combination just shows how English is an incredible mishmash of language groups from all across the world, such that we read European “beeches” made out of Egyptian “papyrus.” Similarly, further south in Spain, in those warmer climates where oaks and Latin-based languages dominate, people have stripped the thick bark of oaks to produce cork for thousands of years. Oaks and cork are so intertwined, even today most cork comes from oak trees, that the Latin word for oak, quercus, morphed into the modern word “cork.” Try saying them now, fast: cork, quercus, corcus, corkus. Some etymologies fit like puzzle pieces and help the world make sense, while others only reveal the random absurdity that still governs all. Have you ever wondered why a mile, perhaps the most vital measurement in the U.S., is a seemingly random 5,280 feet? Mile and “mil”– as in millimeter– mean the same thing: a thousand. The story goes back to fifth-century England, which was under military occupation by the Roman Empire. Originally, “mile” was a Roman military term referring to 1,000 steps of a soldier, which is an easy way to track distance on the march, but is utterly meaningless in any other measurement system. Note: if you test this, you will likely march further than a mile in 1,000 paces, because the average height of a Roman was far less than the modern average. I find it delightfully ridiculous that even today we use miles, a term from the fifth century, to describe things like how far your car travels per gallon of gas or
Art by Mia Weyant
Headwaters Magazine 7
to define a light year (5.88 trillion miles). Returning to those beautiful Germanic forests, we find
the origin of one of the most vital words in the English language: “truth.” Think of all the meanings attached to “truth:” reliable, steadfast, solid, real. Naming an object is easy: you just point at the thing and make a sound. But
