2024-03-29, 10:32 *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
 
Pages: 1 2 [3]
  Print  
Author Topic: The Beginning of WWIII?  (Read 19550 times)
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Tabun
Pixel Procrastinator
 

Team Member
Elite (3k+)
******
Posts: 3330

WWW
« Reply #40 on: 2007-07-07, 12:35 »

Quote
evil
O.E. yfel (Kentish evel) "bad, vicious," from P.Gmc. *ubilaz (cf. O.Saxon ubil, Goth. ubils), from PIE *upelo-, giving the word an original sense of "uppity, overreaching bounds" which slowly worsened. "In OE., as in all the other early Teut. langs., exc. Scandinavian, this word is the most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike or disparagement" [OED]. Evil was the word the Anglo-Saxons used where we would use bad, cruel, unskillful, defective (adj.), or harm, crime, misfortune, disease. The meaning "extreme moral wickedness" was in O.E., but did not become the main sense until 18c. Evil eye (L. oculus malus) was O.E. eage yfel.

Evil has similar origins to "Ill" ("Ill-ness", since it's hard to real here), but it seems the word took an etymological twist, most likely when brought in connection with "pure", "pious" ("purus"), where "evil" is the reversion of that. If so, "evil" got stronger as a sort of notion of "moral impurity" and thus the "moral wickedness" (where "wickedness" comes from "wicce/a" ie., what we now know as "witch" and with the connotation of "dealings with the devil").
It seems then, although I cannot be sure, that "evil" picked up in popularity when it got tied in with (ir)religion. If that trend is followed, then you can look up the bases for most of our present understandings of "evil" in medieval theologian's works, and perhaps put those texts in perspective by considering the etymological roots of the word.

It looks like you have a similar understanding to the "american-typed evil", which is "having no place in this world" (just like a disease would have no place in a healthy community or organism), or would I be mistaken in interpreting it that way? :]
Logged

Tabun ?Morituri Nolumus Mori?
ReBoOt
Mean ol Swede
 
Team Member
Elite
****
Posts: 1294

WWW
« Reply #41 on: 2007-07-07, 16:08 »

Damn tab that was..uhm deep Slipgate - Tongue
Logged
Pages: 1 2 [3]
  Print  
 
Jump to: