I love etymologies.  I love the ‘trailing clouds of glory’ words bring with them, discovering associations from their history which enrich them now. Because of my ‘O’ level, Latin echoes often come quite easily: crescent from crescere to grow, the crescent moon is growing into a circle (Thank you Mrs Tate, Latin teacher in the Lower Fourth);  confidence meaning ‘with faith’; reminisce, ‘to recreate the memory’.  This one is a delightful new discovery. Its root is ‘min’ or rather ‘men’ as in the Latin for mind  mens.  Reminiscing is making the memories again, stirring the synapses, creating the connections.  Not just looking at the past or touching it but feeling it again.  In current use, reminisce suggests old biddies tediously going over the same old stuff.  But perhaps they are doing something far richer than we appreciate: reconnecting with their past selves and co-operating to reaffirm their lives in all their fullness.

I came across the word ‘impeccable’ the other day, in the – to me, unexpected – context of trying to be impeccable in our speech. From some depths of memory, perhaps from the church Latin which provides the text for so much of the choral music I enjoy singing, I recalled peccavi, I have sinned.  Beneath its superficial meaning of ‘flawless’, impeccable means ‘without sin’.  Peccare:  “to miss, mistake, make a mistake, do amiss; transgress, offend, be licentious, sin”.

Apparently, once we get back to the Latin, peccare is a word of uncertain origin:  our sense of doing wrong can be described but not easily explained.  Which feels appropriate – in that our sense of morality goes very deep and one wouldn’t want it explained away – but it’s unusual.  Most of the time, the wonderful etymology on line can give at least one layer of further derivation and gathers a little word family together.   Impeccable’s only relation seems to be sibling peccadillo, a little sin.   I find it strange that there isn’t an antonym ‘peccable’ or a noun – what would it be, ‘pecade’?

I had also been convinced the etymology would link to a more physical meaning and expected that to be ‘hurt’. The injunction to be impeccable in my speech translates in my mind to using words which do no harm.  I was wrong.  There’s no such etymological link, which caused me to wonder why I felt the association so clearly.  I guess the derivation I imagined is my own inner interpretation, from what I have read, and seen and felt. From all that, ‘hurt’ is the word I reach towards. The etymology for hurt suggests collision, bashing against.  The idea of accidentally, carelessly harming others rings absolutely true with me.  Being an un-regarding-bull-in-a-china-shop unable to act with the grace or consideration which is needed?  That’s a concept of ‘pecade’ I can get behind.  And the bull, of course, is maddened by its circumstance, shocked by the noise of the fracturing pottery, pricked by the porcelain shards.  It reacts with fear and increasing frustration, which just makes things worse.  A cycle of outward damage and inward pain.  For arguably the most hurt occurs within myself, that’s the other consequence:  I can be both subject and object of my harm; in the Venn diagram of people to whom I fail to behave impeccably, I am myself a member. 

Instead of pecade or peccable, we have the words sin and sinful.  Sin has Old English, Saxon and Norse roots going deeply back in time, to “the notion … ultimately “it is true,” i.e. “the sin is real”.”  It suggests sin to be an aspect of being oneself, of being me. It’s inescapably human to get things wrong:  life is nothing but damage control. Again, it’s an interpretation that resonates and it feels rather bleak.  But:  ‘wrong’ is another old, strong, rooted word, with lots of sensory elements in its origins:  crooked, bitter.  It’s a taste which causes our mouth to distort involuntarily, makes the muscles twist and flinch.  Our sense of morality goes very deep; we don’t just think it, we feel it.  And that to me is a source of wonder.  At one and the same time, we recognise the truth of our being sinful and feel deeply, right down in our physical being, a distaste and aversion which pushes us back into striving, always, to be impeccable. 

Well, that’s what the etymologies suggest to me.  And of course impeccable is an unachievable ideal .  But that’s the point of an ideal.  Something perfect, out of reach, there for us to aim for and orientate ourselves by.  Something to aspire to.  Final etymology:  aspire comes from the Latin word for breath and is related to the word for spirit.  So while we have to accept that sinning is inevitable, the hope of being better comes to us as naturally as breathing.   May my words be impeccable.