intellegere

Today in my favorite class one of the things we talked about made me realize that there is a word in the English language that we could probably come to understand better. It's a weird word, when you think about it...

under•stand

Isn't that a strange word?  We use it all the time, but what does it mean? 

Is this understanding?  All words have some literal significance, so where in the world did we get such an obscure compound word to mean "to perceive the meaning or significance of something"?

Well, we turned to the trusty online etymology dictionary (a site that I frequent...it can be very enlightening).

The general conclusion was that the word literally means "to stand in the midst of" or "to be close to".  "Stand" still has the general connotation we use with it today, but the meaning of "under" seems to be rather complex.

related roots:

Old English under, Sanskrit antar, Latin inter: "between, among"

Greek entera: "intestines" 

other Old English compounds using "under":
underniman: to receive

undersecan: to investigate

underginnan: to begin

Phrase we use today that makes more sense now you know more about the word "under":

"Under these circumstances..." 

Greek epistamai: "I know how" or "I know"...literally, "I stand upon"

Other Germanic languages use compounds meaning "stand before", and most Indo-European languages use extension of compounds that mean "but together", "separate", or "take grasp" (eg: "comprehend")

Well, this is all neat and stuff (perhaps etymology isn't your thing...perhaps you'd rather study entomology) but...I just wrote a long blog post about the meaning of this one word everyone already knew the meaning of.  

I think it's fascinating because sometimes learning how a word came to be can give us different insights on what it means--not by changing the meaning but by augmenting the meaning we are already familiar with.

So if you want to understand something, you need to stand with it.  Put yourself among it.  Be close to it; allow it to envelop you.

You can't really understand someone, for instance, until you're in their shoes (or in their head) and you see what they're experiencing and you know what they're thinking and feeling, and you know why.

Likewise, others can't understand you unless you allow them to do that.

So... where do you stand?