Oh,boy, the filters are gonna love this entry! Actually, anyone not too interested in my theological ramblings might not care for it, either... but, MY blog, dammit, so here goes....
I'm reading a review of a recent book of British poetry that the author entitled Damnatio Memoriae, which he translated as "Erased from Memory." I found his translation... a little curious. I'd always equated the word "damnation" with things like "condemnation" and "judgement," but the idea of damnation as "erasure"... that's intriguing. I recall a discussion from a theology class in college about a passage of Augustine. (I wish I could find the passage now, but my books are at home, and I'm not turning it up in a quick search... I'm guessing it was either in On Christian Doctrine or his Confessions) Augustine, at one point, talks about Hell as not a place so much as a condition-- one's rejection of God, and the absence of His presence (or, more precisely... existing in one's own shadow, having turned one's back on the light that's ever-present). (For less of a high-brow reference, if you've ever read C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, think of the dwarves at the very end of The Last Battle.)
Anyway, back to my little linguistic mystery... I looked it up (of course). The words "condemn" and "damn" DO have the same root:
damn's etymology: Middle English dampnen, from Old French dampner, from Latin damnare, to condemn, inflict loss upon, from damnum, loss.
condemn's etymology: Middle English condemnen, from Old French condemner, from Latin condemnare : com- (intensive pref.) + damnare, to sentence, from damnum, penalty.
Now, the perceptive will note what I did: same root, damnum, translated with two different senses-- loss, and penalty. HMM.
So, on to Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary: sure enough, damnum is given two meanings. In the first sense, it refers to a hurt, harm, damage, injury, or loss (given also as the opposite of lucrum, gain, profit, advantage; wealth, riches). The second meaning is the legal sense, which refers to a fine, mulct, or penalty. So... I can see the second definition growing out of the first, and I find the relationship to its antonym quite intriguing, in this context.
Of course, language meanings change-- my favorite example is the Anglo-Saxon-born doom, which used to be a close synonym of the Norman-French-rooted judgement, which is how we get "doomsday" and "judgement day" meaning the same thing. But still... it's intriguing to reflect back on the Latin here, and look at how the sense has changed... or how an understanding of the *older* sense of a word can inform the modern one, and make it that much richer.
Oh, and thing two... an easy bit, for those who just waded through my linguistic maunderings (and fie on you that just scrolled down!)-- someone at work showed me a site I'd never come across before. LOTS and LOTS of free books online (as in out-of-copyright free, don't expect the latest bestsellers here). I'm impressed by their huge number of available formats, too. Check out Manybooks.net!
Posted by gris at May 24, 2005 12:43 PMWell, der. In all that linguistic research, I somehow never turned up THIS. The translation wasn't as creatively original as I'd thought... the term refers to a practice that went back to the Roman Senate, of dishonoring traitors by essentially wiping them from memory. (Removing their names from the rolls, destroying statues and mentions on any public plaques, etc.) Hm. Kind of a scary idea, to a historian. And a frustrating one... but, well, I don't suppose it really bears on the linguistic forays it started me on, concerning the roots of damnation, so to speak.
Posted by: Gris at May 25, 2005 09:56 PM