{"id":36946,"date":"2023-03-30T22:14:20","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T05:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/?p=36946"},"modified":"2023-03-30T22:50:51","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T05:50:51","slug":"patior-pati-passus-sum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/patior-pati-passus-sum\/","title":{"rendered":"Patior, pati, passus sum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My Latin teacher’s favorite Latin word is patior, pati, passus sum<\/em> – these are the three principle parts of the verb “to suffer”. The present active participle is patien<\/em>s\/patientis<\/em>, from which we get the English word “patience.” From the perfect passive participle passus<\/em>, we get our word “passion”. I thought I knew a lot about this word, but Anthony Esolen taught me more in his Word of the Week column<\/a> (link<\/a>) on Substack. He does some good history of our word “passion” and how its meaning has shifted over the centuries, but this is the wow moment for me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ancient Indo-European root that gives us Latin passus, suffered, <\/em>shows up in only a few of the great limbs of the tree. In Germanic, it gave us the Anglo Saxon feogan, to hate, <\/em>and its participle which turned into a noun, feond, the hating one: an enemy; <\/em>and that ended up denoting man\u2019s greatest enemy of all, the fiend, the Devil. <\/em>So the irony is this: the great fiend desired no other than that man should suffer and be alienated from God, but Christ by suffering defeated the enemy that imposed the suffering, as he would glut the mouth of death with death itself. And therefore let us always remember that our trouble is seldom that we feel too much, but rather that we feel too little. And may the Lord enlarge our hearts and direct our passions to the good and the true.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I’m only a novice at learning the relationship between different families of proto-IndoEuropean (or PIE in linguistic circles). I was low-level aware that the “p” and “f” sounds are frequently related – as in, over time they can shift into each other as languages differentiate, but it never would have occurred to me that this root “pei-” in PIE (“to harm”) yields both “passion” and “fiend” in English. So cool. Yet it makes sense, too. Language is cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Latin teacher’s favorite Latin word is patior, pati, passus sum – these are the three principle parts of the verb “to suffer”. The present active participle is patiens\/patientis, from which we get the English word “patience.” From the perfect passive participle passus, we get our word “passion”. I thought I knew a lot about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2894],"tags":[3350,919,3349],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":200,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/the-ruin-old-english-film\/","url_meta":{"origin":36946,"position":0},"title":"“The Ruin” (Old English) film","author":"Jandy","date":"January 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I came across this short film in a blog by an Anglo-Saxon scholar, the Unlocked Wordhoard. It's a 6-minute adaptation of an Old English elegiac poem, \"The Ruin,\" done by some students at the University of Oxford. I hadn't read the poem before (Old English and modern English text here),\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":546,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/allison-and-ivan-the-umbrella-dance\/","url_meta":{"origin":36946,"position":1},"title":"Allison and Ivan – The Umbrella Dance","author":"Jandy","date":"July 20, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I just started using a new (to me) statistics tracker (Pmetrics from Performancing, which I highly recommend based on the week I've been using it), and I've noticed several hits from people looking for Allison and Ivan's umbrella dance from last year, which Nigel mentioned a week or two ago\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Television"","block_context":{"text":"Television","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/television\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":161,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/semester-wind-down\/","url_meta":{"origin":36946,"position":2},"title":"Semester wind-down","author":"Jandy","date":"December 8, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I know all I've posted about lately is school. But it has been sort of prominent in my mind. ;) Not as prominent as it should have been. I completely gave into my procrastination tendencies this week, writing my final paper for Metaphysical Poetry last night from 7pm-midnight, then collapsing--until\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":457,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/so-you-think-you-can-dance-top-20\/","url_meta":{"origin":36946,"position":3},"title":"So You Think You Can Dance Top 20 Announcement","author":"Jandy","date":"June 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm pretty happy with the top twenty dancers chosen on So You Think You Can Dance last night. My only question is what happened to the girl who was injured during Vegas week last year and was promised that she could re-enter the competition during Vegas week this year? Didn't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Television"","block_context":{"text":"Television","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/television\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":119,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/word-and-words-and-modernism\/","url_meta":{"origin":36946,"position":4},"title":"Word (and words) (and modernism)","author":"Jandy","date":"October 6, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Word's spell-checker doesn't like \"inclusivity.\" When I ask it for suggestions (thinking, well, maybe \"inclusiveness\" or something is more acceptable), it gives me \"exclusivity.\" I ask you, why would \"exclusivity\" be a word, but \"inclusivity\" not be? Webster Online likes it just fine, so I'm using it. But seriously. Word\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3407,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/stricken-smitten-and-afflicted\/","url_meta":{"origin":36946,"position":5},"title":"Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted","author":"Jandy","date":"April 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Stricken, smitten, and afflicted, see him dying on the tree! 'Tis the Christ by man rejected; yes, my soul, 'tis he, 'tis he! 'Tis the long-expected Prophet, David's son, yet David's Lord; by his Son God now has spoken: 'tis the true and faithful Word. Tell me, ye who hear\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christianity"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/christianity\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36946"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}