I'm No Aristotle, Part 1

I know when I started this blog I thought I might run out of words and subjects within a year. But the English language is so rich and diverse that after blogging for over a year (and 381 words by my count) I still have a list of 146 words I haven’t gotten to yet.

So, let’s get to some that lead to others.

I begin my travel season this week, which will see me at the airport in nine of the next ten weeks, and 12 of the 14 weeks between now and Memorial Day. While to some that peregrination may seem deracinative, being errant does not extirpate me. And while I am peripatetic I hope the schedule does not make me an arrant fool.

Peregrination is a word I first encountered with the return of Perigrine falcons to a city in which I was living. They had disappeared and their nidification (a good word for a later blog) was indicative of a return from near extinction (not a vacation in the Bahamas).  

Peregrination (the noun form of the word) came to English in the 1520s, thirty years before it was given as an adjective (peregrine) to the falcon even though the bird had been known with that modifier in Middle Latin and (by the late 14^th century) in Old French. The noun form came originally from the Latin word peregrinationem, which refers to a journey or travelling abroad. Peregrinus was formed by attaching the prefix per- that meant “outside the Roman territory” to agri, which meant field, territory or land (from which we get two words: agriculture and acre).

One dictionary defines it as “travelling from one place to another, especially on foot”, an interesting definition given its aviary connection. Another describes it simply as an extensive voyage. Yet another defines it as “following (e.g., a route), travelling the world. While I will not leave North America, I will be involved in peregrination. But more like the falcons (I’ll be flying most places) than on foot.

Walking around leads me to the word peripatetic, which one dictionary describes simply as walking or travelling about.  Another describes it as itinerant, which is a good description of what I do but must wait for later. The word peripatetic has a very storied history.

Aristotle taught his students while walking through the Lyceum in Athens.  The word describing such walking around in Greek was peripatein (peri-  referring to “around” and patein to walking). Aristotle’s students became known as peripatetikos (peripatetikos). Passing through Latin and Old French it came to English in about 1400, first as a descriptor of a disciple of Aristotle, and then by the 1600s as anyone who walks around. It still retains a strong tie to teaching or talking, and I most often use it in that sense when I step away from the podium (see blog for 4/11/10) during a presentation.

I’m no Aristotle, but at least I can present in the same style. It also makes me a harder target to hit when people throw things at me.