Stoic. You probably know what it means: “a person who accepts what happens without complaint or showing emotion.”

I was in college when I learned that this was referring to a particular group of people who adhered to the philosophy of Zeno and then Epictetus, ancient Greek and Roman philosophers…but even then I didn’t learn where the word came from.

Apparently the Greek word from which we get stoic is stoa which means … wait for it … PORCH! That’s right. Stoic means “from the porch.” Why, you may ask? Because Zeno liked to give lectures from his portico. His followers would gather around his porch to listen to him, and so they became known as Stoics.

Do you accept whatever befalls you with detachment?

My daughter and I have been reading a verse from Matthew in Greek each day and then looking at the translation (after she does actual translation in her Ancient Greek textbook), just to see the language in actual use. Well, when one starts in Matthew, that means one comes across verses like “Mary was found to be with child…” Which means one notices that the Ancient Greek word for “pregnant” or “with child” is en gastri. See anything familiar there? Gastr- is where we get gastro, as in “stomach.” It’s pretty much “in the stomach.” Which of course, makes sense.

Given that as of the time I’m writing this I have 5 friends who are either pregnant or just delivered, I thought it would be fun to look at the English word too. =)

English pregnant (from the early 1400s) is from the Latin praegnantem, which literally means “before birth.” Though the word’s been around quite a long time in English, for quite a while it was not considered polite to ever mention it in conversation. Not until the 1950s did it really become okay. Until then, there were an array of euphemisms, which I’m sure we’ve all come across in our reading. Increasing, in a family way, in a delicate condition, and the like.

I’m very excited that so many of my friends and relatives are welcoming new life into the world, however you want to phrase it!

Swear is one of those words that comes to us alllll the way from Old English. In its original (and still a surviving) meaning, it’s simply “to take an oath.” You may wonder, then, why it’s sometimes associated with “use bad language”? I know I have! That meaning is pretty ancient too, dating to the early 1400s. It’s thought to have developed because of the “invoking of sacred names” that comes with taking an oath.

There’s a pretty funny diatribe on the difference between swear and curse by an etymologist, which I shall here quote just for the fun of it:

[Swearing and cursing] are entirely different things : the first is invoking the witness of a Spirit to an assertion you wish to make ; the second is invoking the assistance of a Spirit, in a mischief you wish to inflict. When ill-educated and ill-tempered people clamorously confuse the two invocations, they are not, in reality, either cursing or swearing ; but merely vomiting empty words indecently. True swearing and cursing must always be distinct and solemn …. [Ruskin, “Fors Clavigera”]

So then. Swearing, by his definition, is an oath witnessed by God; whereas cursing is calling down ill on someone by the power of God or a less-holy entity.

When you look up mission in the dictionary, there are a LOT of definitions listed. A task a group is charged with. A calling or vocation. A group of people organized to carry out a certain task. A ministry. Then, in entry 5, you get the obsolete one: “the act of sending.”

Of course, if we’re looking at the history of a word, we should always start with the obsolete meaning, right? LOL.

Mission comes directly from the Latin missionem, which means “the act of sending, a dispatching; a release, a setting at liberty; discharge from service, dismissal.”

It’s literally a sending-forth. That’s also, obviously, where dismissal comes from. I hadn’t ever really examined the connection between those two until it was explained that the dismissal from a church service is not meant to be the pastor saying, “Okay, we’re done. Have a good day.” It’s literally saying, “You’ve now been filled with the Holy Spirit and the Word of God–go, take it into the world!”

A crucial distinction, isn’t it?

The word mission has been in English since the 1500s as “a sending forth.” By the 1640s, it referred to the organized effort of spreading the Gospel. The word mass is even older and from the same root, being the original word used for the religious service in which you receive communion and then are sent out into the world. Dismiss is from the early 1400s, but dismissal wasn’t created as a form until the 1790s! (Who knew?)

So remember, next time you leave a service, that we’re all sent out on a mission–to spread His light in the world.