The German word Hinrichtung caught my eye the other day. Hinrichtung means "execution" and you can guess why it's in the news. Our word "execution" is Norman and bland; it actually comes from fusing the Latin ex + sequi in the sense of "follows from." In the consequent fusion, one of the sounds "x" or "s" was put to death, making exe-que. Our related words "chief executive" and "executive branch" could be thought of as the "follow-fromers" of the law. The governmental sense of the word came first while the business sense of the word was apparently a 20th century one. This got me to thinking of who best in American politics has "executive experience."
Back to Hinrichtung. I often look to German for insight into word meanings. The Germans are sometimes brutally honest in their metaphors. In this case, Hinrichtung is best understood as the verb: hinrichten is a melding of hin + richten with hin* meaning "away from" and richten meaning "to judge" (Der Richter means the judge). So putting them together, hinrichten means "to put away by judgement."
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* Old and Middle English were full of germanic directional adverbs like hin. Think hither, thither, whither, whence, thence, and henceforth. Legalese preserves these fossils.
5 comments:
I like the ex + sequence better than the out/off + judgement.
It reminded me, as I read, of a similar little trap. And it's not just me feeling the trap, I notice others who approach from English reach for the same solution. The problem is expressing "caring" about something when your means to get at that are clear signals for "I don't care" and "supervise" "take care of" and "keep / save," and "concern" and "worry" and "attention."
Everyone, no matter the context, "care about you, care about it, care about us," goes for a faint "supervise." It's a mismatch that doesn't quite work because nothing is being supervised. They do a hand configuration for "supervise" with the motion that's used for "continue." That is, in each separate case, each separate person lands on the same solution, their own neologism unique to them, for want of a proper sign, and it all turns out to be the same thing. Uniquely universal. Quite remarkable.
And I wonder, we all do it seems, why the language doesn't have a sign for concept "care" but does have one for its opposite.
You're conflating execution with executive.
I would say the last chief executive who adhered to your latin derivation - follows form - was Calvin Coolidge.
Oops, Follows from.
Not me. I'm conflating it with cuteness.
Get too cute and get axed.
Thus, axe-cuted.
Trump was certainly an effective Hinrichter on TV (from what I hear).
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