Stonehenge Archives - Write for Results

The Writing Guy luxuriates in birdsong

On the weekend, as I mentioned on yesterday’s podcast 147, on Saturday, I had two or three delightful hours at Stonehenge. World Heritage Site, obviously, and a site of deep spiritual, historic and astrological significance. Very, very beautiful. It was a stunning day: if you were in the UK on the Saturday, 12^th of June, it was beautiful…and very, very hot. It got so hot that I had to find the shade of a tree.

About 200 metres away from Stonehenge I just lay down in the grass in the shade of this tree, watching the clouds going by and listening to the birdsong. It was very, very beautiful and very relaxing. Not sure if this is giving you insight into how The Writing Guy spends his weekends! I certainly don’t do this every weekend. But even if I did, so what? It was just beautiful to have the time and leisure to be able to do that.

And so I lay there in the shade of this tree because it was really baking hot and I just became aware of this wonderful birdsong going on around me, which as I learned later is mainly skylarks. But there was a lot of activity: flies and bees buzzing around me, and particularly the bird song was, was very impressive and that got me thinking about the word ‘jargon’, because I read many years ago that ‘jargon’ is from Old French [in the podcast I mistakenly said ‘Old English’. Ed] meaning ‘birdsong’ (at least according to the jargon definition in the online etymology dictionary).

Jargonising your writing (ugh!) won’t make your words sound like birdsong

The ‘jargon’ definition comes from the mid-14th century, meaning ‘unintelligible talk, gibberish, chattering or jabbering’, and it’s from the old French jargon. A chattering of birds. So you know, when you are using technical terms or kind of business jargon, you may think, ooh I’m being very artistic by using birdsong, but actually it’s more like unintelligible talk! Nonsense. Hot air.

And it was only from the 1650s that the word ‘jargon’ gained the additional meaning of words or language or phraseology peculiar to a sect, profession, discipline or subject, as in ‘technical jargon’, technical terms, ie ‘technical jargon’. And that’s fine as long as your reader is a member of that particular sect or profession and understands those terms (also known, by the way, as ‘terms of art’, ie a term that has a specialised meaning in a particular field or profession.

So if you’re a lawyer than the word ‘tort’ would count as a term of art. Or if you’re in financial services you might use the phrase ‘collateralized debt obligation’. That will have a particular meaning for people in that professional industry. The temptation or the risk if you like is if you overuse that kind of language, it’s just going to de-humanise it and make it hard even for a technical reader who’s familiar with that terminology to read.

And just going back to ‘jargon’, I also read in the dictionary that Middle English has it as a verb, jargounen, to chatter, which is originally from the French.

The bottom line of the jargon definition

So, yeah, what’s the bottom line from this? How did I get from listening to beautiful birdsong in Stonehenge to the origin of the ‘jargon’ definition? And what does that mean for us as writers?

I guess what that means is that if you are 100% sure that 100% of your readership belong to the same sect, discipline or specialised subject area, then you can safely use technical jargon. But in my experience that’s very rare to have 100% of your readership coming from the same industry, the same specialist industry. There may be occasions where there really is no substitute or no alternative to using a piece of technical jargon. But often, often there is. And I think we as writers need to — for the sake of the reader and readability — we need to strike that balance between using technical jargon and using what I would call plain English, which is simple, middle register, more conversational, more human sounding language.

There you go, that’s it for today. Hope that was useful and I will see you tomorrow for episode 149, Thanks for listening. Bye now.

Scott Keyser In Write for Results

Meaning of worship, inspired by Stonehenge

Yesterday I had a beautiful day, discovering the meaning of worship. After dropping my daughter off at Bristol, where she’s coming to the end of her Masters there in Economics, I swung via Stonehenge. If you can believe it, in all my 62 years on the planet, specifically in England, I’ve never been to Stonehenge. It was great. Rather than paying the [what I consider rather exorbitant] 25 quid to get in, I just walked along the public footpath that takes you within 100 metres of the stones. That was good enough for me.

It’s really a truly inspiring place (even apart from the weather yesterday, which was stunning). It wasn’t that crowded either, an added bonus. And you know, it’s an incredible monument and a World Heritage Site. It was built, they estimate, 4500 to 5000 years ago, in 2500 BC, as a site of deep spiritual, astrological and astronomical significance.

You probably know this, but the heel stone, main Portal and the altar are aligned on both the mid-winter and the mid-summer solstices. In fact, the mid-summer solstice is coming up in the next few days on the 21st of June. Can you imagine the sophistication, ingenuity and calculations required to get that alignment right, year in year out, for millennia? That’s pretty phenomenal. I was in awe.

As you might expect of The Writing Guy, it got me thinking about language connected with Stonehenge and sites of spiritual significance. So, what is the origin of words like worship, reverence, veneration and adoration? Where do they come from?

Let’s start with the meaning of worship.

The Writing Guy looks at the meaning of ‘worship’

According to the etymology online website, the word worship comes from the Old English or West Saxon word weorðscipe. It means ‘the condition of being worthy’. It also means dignity, glory, distinction, honour or renown. The sense of paying reverence, or revering a supernatural divine being, is first recorded in about 1300, as is the first use of it also meaning an honourable person (as in the Worshipful Company of Glovers, the Worshipful Mayor of London, from around the 13th or 14th century).

So that’s worship. The condition of being worthy, or of having value.

The Writing Guy looks at ‘adore’

Next, I looked up adore, which I think I’m right in saying comes from aouren, meaning to worship, pay divine honors to, bow down before. It comes from Old French aorer and before that the Latin adorare, which is composed of two root words: the prefix, ad-, meaning to or towards, and orare, to speak formally to or pray.

So, that’s where we get the idea of adoration when we’re praying to somebody or something. You are praying or speaking to it, in order to be granted some kind of desire or wish.

The meaning ‘to honour very highly’ is attested as coming from the 1590s, whilst the additional meaning of ‘to be very fond of’ is a relatively recent addition from the 1880s.

The Writing Guy defines ‘venerate’

Finally, we have venerate. This word comes from Latin veneratus, the past participle of venerare, to revere or worship, which in turn comes from veneris, the genitive form of venus. Venus means beauty, love or desire. You can see again, we venerate, we respect something that we love and we find beautiful.

Even further back in time we find the Proto Indo-European root, wen-, which means ‘to desire or strive for’. That’s where we get words like venereal (as in venereal disease) and venery, which is an old word for hunting. I guess if you’re pursuing the object of your affection, they’re you’re ‘quarry’, just as you might pursue a stag or deer. Venial, which I think means mercenary, says you’re in love with money. Venom comes from that as well. Winsome, somebody who’s attractive, and wish comes from wen- as well. It’s something that we desire. We wish for something. So it’s all related.

Musings on the meaning of worship

Those are my musings. I hope they’re of some interest—spurred, stimulated and inspired by my stunning afternoon yesterday at Stonehenge.

Thanks very much for joining me here, for the meaning of worship, roused by Stonehenge. I’m Scott Keyser, The Writing Guy, helping smart professionals to find their voice, write Human and change the world with their words. I invite you subscribe to this blog, as well as to The Writing Guy podcast.

Stonehenge

‘Jargon’ definition: where the word comes from