"You got a face with a view" is a line in that Talking Heads song.
It seems to me that "face" and "view" are mirror images in a word sense.
"Face" or facie, is a replacement word in English. Like so many other names of body parts, face replaced the Olde English ondwlita or andwlita which survived briefly in Middle English as anleth (there are other humorous Anglo-Saxon names for body parts at that first link).
Given the Norman Conquest, I first looked to French to see a deeper meaning of face, but the French gave up using face for "front of the head" in the 17th century and replaced it with visage (older vis), back-formed from Latin visus "sight" which derived from the Latin verb videre. Of course our word view derives from videre as well.
Now vision and view also mean sight and there is a parallel Germanic etymology behind the word sight. In modern German, das Gesicht means face (in which you might see the root Sicht, cognate with the English word sight = view). But there's an even older German word, Antlitz (used only poetically these days much as we'd use visage). Antlitz in turn relates back etymologically to the Old English andwlita. It is like a face in the mirror.
7 comments:
I thought Andalucía might be related... but after reading the etymology, I'm not so sure.
"In the form of Vandalusia, it was traditionally believed to be derived from the name of the Germanic tribe, the Vandals,[10] that briefly colonized parts of Iberia from AD 409 to AD 429."
lus, light, view, face.
maybe not.
Thanks for the link, Lem. That's an interesting part of the world with an interesting history. Just north is Almadén where mercury has been mined continuously for 2000 years.
Rummaging through my discs, I found one by Talking Heads left by my brother-in-law. Hold on, let me look it up . . . True Stories is the title.
Anyway, I never liked Talking Heads. First heard them because "Psycho Killer" was popular. I thought that song pretty much the epitome of what you get when college art fags decide to purchase some instruments and start a band.
Anyway, I needed something to listen to down in the basement while lifting. Why not give it a try?
I recognized one of the songs. Something or other about a wild night, IIRC. "That one's not so terribly bad," I said to myself.
Seemed to have a happy energy about it sufficient to outweigh its insipid man-child flailings.
Also left by my brother-in-law was the Gin Blossoms "New Miserable Experience." Never listened to it before. Thought I'd give it a try because basement.
I recognized every song on the disc except for maybe two. And I'm, like, how the hell could that be?
And then I realized I'd heard those songs before, repeatedly, as part of the muzak they play at places like Home Depot and Lowes.
"New Miserable Experience" was okay, so-so. Sounded to me like either (1) well-established studio musicians trying to sound like they were inexperienced or (2) inexperienced musicians who rehearsed one hell of a lot.
What to make of my perception that every single song was in the same key using the same relative pentatonic? "Don't be a pretentious jackass," was my response. "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about."
I should hasten to add that I always liked the title "New Miserable Experience."
And not just because it's a very clever way to lower expectations.
Truth, Baby!!!
@Lem: The Doors wrote a song called "Spanish Caravan" which mentioned Andalusia which evoked the Moors.
link
Post a Comment