I think God as One Who Pours Out is a very reasonable core meaning. Seriously: why would a person invoke God? To pour out, either blessings or punishment. To pour out rain. to pour out life itself. To wash out one's enemies.
"Pouring out" is central to the Old Testament prophet Elijah.
* "Pouring out" was central to the decisive battle over Ba'al's priests. First Elijah poured out water on his offering. Then God rained down fire and accepted that offering.
* The widow poured out the last of her olive oil for Elijah; and in so doing, had an unending supply of olive oil pouring out of her vessel.
* God poured down rain, as a sign.
* Elijah wanted to see God: so God poured out all manner of natural phenomena. But Elijah knew that God was in what He held in reserve. It was a still, small voice where God appeared. (This is the second "pouring out" story of Elijah where God, YHWH, does something different than what was expected of gods).
* And finally, Elijah was taken up to heaven and a double portion of his spirit was poured onto his disciple Elisha.
I think that you make a really good point here. Considering the fact that these were Christian missionaries, referring to a deity as "that which is poured out" is really quite fitting, because we view the love of Christ as a "kenosis"---that is to say, a self-emptying love, a love that pours oneself out. Moreover, if you want to slide the meaning into "for whom the pouring out is done", as our author suggests, it creates a double entendre almost of the word God, which has very cool connotations about the relationship between the Father and Son persons of the Trinity. Christ, as that which is poured out, and the Father, as that to whom the sacrifice is made, for whom the wine is poured out. I really want to work the Holy Spirit into there as well, but I'm not sure that there is enough evidence for more than mere speculation.
I am not a linguist, so a lot of this right over my head. But I love feeling the breeze. I really appreciate the way you entice the reader along these mysterious paths. And the poet part of me really loves tracing the connections across time and languages. Always a pleasure. Thanks.
Maybe they messed with the word, like with bear. Seems like a word you might mess with. Remove the H? Nah. I think it's the poured one. I think they were into oils. Pouring oils as they invoked the gods. Like a christ is a smeared one.
You bring up a good point: names of gods are frequently characterized by puzzling sound changes, ones which could be explained by a process of taboo deformation, as some English speakers have done to “God” to turn it into “Gosh.”
How do we know this isn't *ǵʰū-tóm? My thinking is, and please correct me, the presence of an unidentifiable *H means it's never present next to *e, so I have to assume its only effect is in lengthening a vowel (including *i and *u), so how do we know it's *V̆H and not *V̄?
> By long vowels, I mean a set of vowels which are held for longer than their corresponding short vowels. Modern English doesn’t really have these, but older forms of English did.
Though many non-rhotic dialects have introduced new length distinctions! Southern England has a difference between /bɪd bɛd/ "bid, bed" and /bɪːd bɛːd/ "beard, bared".
Because there are few cases where long vowels (especially long *ū) need to be reconstructed as existing in PIE independent of any laryngeals, the methodological approach often taken is to reconstruct laryngeals to explain long vowels in most places where they occur, even when there isn’t direct (e.g., Anatolian) evidence for them. In the case of *ghewH-, however, we also have the ablaut series (e.g. forms which imply PIE *ǵhew-), which shows us that the -u- in the *ǵhūtóm is the result of vocalizing the -w- preceding a laryngeal, rather than as an independent long vowel.
What about the Romance version of God, i.e., dieu, dios, etc.?That seems unrelated to either of the two PIE etymologies you suggest but seems to serve the same function as God or god(s).
Latin deus, which is the source of all these Romance words, is from an old root meaning ‘sky.’ The same root also gives us names for particular sky gods, such as Zeus.
Here’s a counterintuitive one for you: although this root also gives Latin “dies” ‘day’, the English cognate of this sky root is actually the “Tue” in Tuesday! The god Tiw (Old Norse Týr) is cognate to deus. The d- in Latin words usually corresponds to a t- in Germanic, so English “day” is reconstructed as coming from another root, usually one meaning ‘burn.’
I really appreciate the way you explain notation. I notice it more when it happens to be something _I_ still need, like how to pronounce a word written in Greek characters, but the explicit description of long vowels and the line-over would have been even more important if I had walked a different path.
I find myself inclined to, or at least attracted by, the metonymy argument; for no other reason than something similar seems to be the case with the Chinese term: 帝 [dì] god, referring originally to the deity/deities of Shang (c. 1600-1046 BC). The character is said to represent the altar at which the god was worshipped and thus to the god. See :
Whenever I read an etymology trace discussion, I always come back to a form of the following question:
If we trace God back to a word that means or is related to ‘pour’; what can we say about the etymological roots of the English word “pour”? What about every other PIE-branch language’s word that means “pour”? And is it the case that they point to the same PIE root for “pour”?
Not a trained linguist so I don’t know if that’s a sensible question to ask, but it always comes to mind.
I'm a pourer especially because in ancient Greek art you find gods holding phiali (libation-cups. For whom are they doing the pouring? Did "to pour" ever have a middle voice?
I’m sure it wasn’t the intention, but the first two paragraphs might be misconstrued as supporting the modern fallacy that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were straightforwardly named after Tiw, Woden, Þunor and Frig: they weren’t. All of the English names of the weekdays are in origin calques on the Latin names which preserve the Latin names of the planets Mars, Mercury, Jove and Venus (though those names were borrowed– in Latin - from the gods in question, of course). The logic behind the naming scheme – which looks a bit of a ragbag in English, especially when the names of the days in question are associated with the gods - is that it simply makes use of the names of the seven heavenly bodies known to the Romans. Thus no ‘talent for integrating pagan concepts … into a Christian worldview’ involved.
I did a quick word search of the Bible. God is described as pouring out by the Prophet Amos and in the psalms. But most especially by Job: three times Job laments that God "gives rain to the earth, pours water down on the fields;" "pours contempt on princes and loosens the belt of the strong;" and that, "his archers surrounded me. He slashes my innards and shows no mercy, he pours my gall on the ground."
In the book of Jeremiah, seven times God says He will pour out (generally His wrath) on His people; but seven times, His people feebly pour out drink offerings to other gods.
God also tells that He will pour out His Spirit to the prophets Isaiah (on Israel's descendants) and Joel (on all humanity).
The idea of god as the one who pours strikes me with such heavy metaphorical meaning as well. I have an obsession with the firmament and the waters (ύδατος) above” and “below”. How is there above and below in an abyss? Only if the central location (god’s center) is also the source of the waters. The waters, the life source, was poured out of him. That was the beginning. Now all life makes up god. ? Idk
In many human cultures, the practice of libation is used not to invoke some divinities as we understand the "gods" to be, but rather, to invoke the spirits of the ancestors.
This should be kept in mind regarding the burial mounds link. Maybe the "poured ones" aren't originally metaphysical superbeings, but simply the souls of the ancestors to a person, a family, a clan, a tribe.
Pulling further on the same thread, one can hypothesise a single original ancestor that rules all the ancestors. He'd THE god. Or She. Or neutrally It.
Right, if the “heaped up ones” theory is correct, the meaning would have shifted at some point from ancestor spirits to beings we think of as gods, although firm distinctions of category between these entities may not have applied in the early days.
Wow, Beekes searches for substrate everywhere, huh? He's famous for his Greek etymological dictionary throwing out dozens of words to "Pre-Greek".
I know, I laughed when I saw his name come up in connection with this!
The free column is much appreciated!
I think God as One Who Pours Out is a very reasonable core meaning. Seriously: why would a person invoke God? To pour out, either blessings or punishment. To pour out rain. to pour out life itself. To wash out one's enemies.
"Pouring out" is central to the Old Testament prophet Elijah.
* "Pouring out" was central to the decisive battle over Ba'al's priests. First Elijah poured out water on his offering. Then God rained down fire and accepted that offering.
* The widow poured out the last of her olive oil for Elijah; and in so doing, had an unending supply of olive oil pouring out of her vessel.
* God poured down rain, as a sign.
* Elijah wanted to see God: so God poured out all manner of natural phenomena. But Elijah knew that God was in what He held in reserve. It was a still, small voice where God appeared. (This is the second "pouring out" story of Elijah where God, YHWH, does something different than what was expected of gods).
* And finally, Elijah was taken up to heaven and a double portion of his spirit was poured onto his disciple Elisha.
I think that you make a really good point here. Considering the fact that these were Christian missionaries, referring to a deity as "that which is poured out" is really quite fitting, because we view the love of Christ as a "kenosis"---that is to say, a self-emptying love, a love that pours oneself out. Moreover, if you want to slide the meaning into "for whom the pouring out is done", as our author suggests, it creates a double entendre almost of the word God, which has very cool connotations about the relationship between the Father and Son persons of the Trinity. Christ, as that which is poured out, and the Father, as that to whom the sacrifice is made, for whom the wine is poured out. I really want to work the Holy Spirit into there as well, but I'm not sure that there is enough evidence for more than mere speculation.
But would they recognize any connection between "god" and "ġēotan"? I'd expect not, but maybe it's more transparent in Old English than I think.
Awesome. Way to run with it.
>"The story of the discovery of laryngeals in Proto-Indo-European is actually a ripping good yarn"
Definitely an example of the assertion that most sentences that people utter are unique :) :)
I am not a linguist, so a lot of this right over my head. But I love feeling the breeze. I really appreciate the way you entice the reader along these mysterious paths. And the poet part of me really loves tracing the connections across time and languages. Always a pleasure. Thanks.
Yeah, this one ended up a bit technical due to all the long vowel malarkey. But I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying the breeze!
Maybe they messed with the word, like with bear. Seems like a word you might mess with. Remove the H? Nah. I think it's the poured one. I think they were into oils. Pouring oils as they invoked the gods. Like a christ is a smeared one.
You bring up a good point: names of gods are frequently characterized by puzzling sound changes, ones which could be explained by a process of taboo deformation, as some English speakers have done to “God” to turn it into “Gosh.”
Yeah maybe they gorblimeyed the word
> *ǵʰuH-tóm
How do we know this isn't *ǵʰū-tóm? My thinking is, and please correct me, the presence of an unidentifiable *H means it's never present next to *e, so I have to assume its only effect is in lengthening a vowel (including *i and *u), so how do we know it's *V̆H and not *V̄?
> By long vowels, I mean a set of vowels which are held for longer than their corresponding short vowels. Modern English doesn’t really have these, but older forms of English did.
Though many non-rhotic dialects have introduced new length distinctions! Southern England has a difference between /bɪd bɛd/ "bid, bed" and /bɪːd bɛːd/ "beard, bared".
Because there are few cases where long vowels (especially long *ū) need to be reconstructed as existing in PIE independent of any laryngeals, the methodological approach often taken is to reconstruct laryngeals to explain long vowels in most places where they occur, even when there isn’t direct (e.g., Anatolian) evidence for them. In the case of *ghewH-, however, we also have the ablaut series (e.g. forms which imply PIE *ǵhew-), which shows us that the -u- in the *ǵhūtóm is the result of vocalizing the -w- preceding a laryngeal, rather than as an independent long vowel.
Re: long vowels in English, ditto Australian!
What about the Romance version of God, i.e., dieu, dios, etc.?That seems unrelated to either of the two PIE etymologies you suggest but seems to serve the same function as God or god(s).
Latin deus, which is the source of all these Romance words, is from an old root meaning ‘sky.’ The same root also gives us names for particular sky gods, such as Zeus.
Also the same root as the word "day"! One of the more productive roots, and oh so shiny :D
Here’s a counterintuitive one for you: although this root also gives Latin “dies” ‘day’, the English cognate of this sky root is actually the “Tue” in Tuesday! The god Tiw (Old Norse Týr) is cognate to deus. The d- in Latin words usually corresponds to a t- in Germanic, so English “day” is reconstructed as coming from another root, usually one meaning ‘burn.’
Oh right, they're false cognates, I mixed up the Italic reflex. Makes sense too, since PIE /d/ > Ger. /t/. Thank you for correcting my mistake! :D
I really appreciate the way you explain notation. I notice it more when it happens to be something _I_ still need, like how to pronounce a word written in Greek characters, but the explicit description of long vowels and the line-over would have been even more important if I had walked a different path.
I find myself inclined to, or at least attracted by, the metonymy argument; for no other reason than something similar seems to be the case with the Chinese term: 帝 [dì] god, referring originally to the deity/deities of Shang (c. 1600-1046 BC). The character is said to represent the altar at which the god was worshipped and thus to the god. See :
https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&char=帝
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/帝#Glyph_origin
PS: I'm rather impressed with Wiktionary as a source for Chinese characters/word origins.
I could be off here. But didn’t the biblical stories come about before the Norse culture?
Whenever I read an etymology trace discussion, I always come back to a form of the following question:
If we trace God back to a word that means or is related to ‘pour’; what can we say about the etymological roots of the English word “pour”? What about every other PIE-branch language’s word that means “pour”? And is it the case that they point to the same PIE root for “pour”?
Not a trained linguist so I don’t know if that’s a sensible question to ask, but it always comes to mind.
I'm a pourer especially because in ancient Greek art you find gods holding phiali (libation-cups. For whom are they doing the pouring? Did "to pour" ever have a middle voice?
I’m sure it wasn’t the intention, but the first two paragraphs might be misconstrued as supporting the modern fallacy that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were straightforwardly named after Tiw, Woden, Þunor and Frig: they weren’t. All of the English names of the weekdays are in origin calques on the Latin names which preserve the Latin names of the planets Mars, Mercury, Jove and Venus (though those names were borrowed– in Latin - from the gods in question, of course). The logic behind the naming scheme – which looks a bit of a ragbag in English, especially when the names of the days in question are associated with the gods - is that it simply makes use of the names of the seven heavenly bodies known to the Romans. Thus no ‘talent for integrating pagan concepts … into a Christian worldview’ involved.
I did a quick word search of the Bible. God is described as pouring out by the Prophet Amos and in the psalms. But most especially by Job: three times Job laments that God "gives rain to the earth, pours water down on the fields;" "pours contempt on princes and loosens the belt of the strong;" and that, "his archers surrounded me. He slashes my innards and shows no mercy, he pours my gall on the ground."
In the book of Jeremiah, seven times God says He will pour out (generally His wrath) on His people; but seven times, His people feebly pour out drink offerings to other gods.
God also tells that He will pour out His Spirit to the prophets Isaiah (on Israel's descendants) and Joel (on all humanity).
The idea of god as the one who pours strikes me with such heavy metaphorical meaning as well. I have an obsession with the firmament and the waters (ύδατος) above” and “below”. How is there above and below in an abyss? Only if the central location (god’s center) is also the source of the waters. The waters, the life source, was poured out of him. That was the beginning. Now all life makes up god. ? Idk
In many human cultures, the practice of libation is used not to invoke some divinities as we understand the "gods" to be, but rather, to invoke the spirits of the ancestors.
This should be kept in mind regarding the burial mounds link. Maybe the "poured ones" aren't originally metaphysical superbeings, but simply the souls of the ancestors to a person, a family, a clan, a tribe.
Pulling further on the same thread, one can hypothesise a single original ancestor that rules all the ancestors. He'd THE god. Or She. Or neutrally It.
Right, if the “heaped up ones” theory is correct, the meaning would have shifted at some point from ancestor spirits to beings we think of as gods, although firm distinctions of category between these entities may not have applied in the early days.