Continuing my effort to get to good words picked up in
reading (see last week’s blog), there is a good word that sounds familiar, but
was unknown to me: hypostatize. It can also be spelled, especially in Britain, hypostatize.
It has been a difficult word for me to wrap my mind around, so it will get a
few more words of description than I normally give.
Hypostatize means to take an idea or a concept (usually) and
consider it to be real, or to take something insubstantial and consider it to
have substance. One dictionary contains the definition of personify or embody.
Its meaning can be better understood by considering its related adjective
hypostatic, which in genetics is used in reference to a nonallelic gene that is
masked by another gene. In Medicine hypostatic refers to the condition of
hypostasis, and in theology hypostatic refers to a distinct personal being or
substance. Hypostatic came into use in English in the 1670s from the Greek word
hypostatikos that means pertaining to
substance and is equivalent to hypostat,
which means “placed under, given support.” But the original form of the word is
hypostasis, a noun form, which came into use in the 1580s. (The verb form
hypostatize didn’t start being used in English until the 1820s.) In medicine it
refers to an accumulation of blood. But in theology it is used either of one of
the members of the trinity (the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit) or of the binary nature
of Christ, which is both human and divine. In metaphysics it refers to that which
is foundational or essential. So in general, it is a foundational idea, the
accumulation or combination of something essential.
That is very different from hypothesize, which means to form
a hypothesis or assumption (or just a guess). Hypothesis is the noun,
hypothesize the verb, and hypothetical the adjective. The adjective form came
into English first, from the Greek word hypothetikos,
then the noun form came into English in the 1590s, and because it had to
come through the Middle French word hypothese
from the Late Latin word hypothesis, which
came from the Greek word hypothesis.
Those silly French, who couldn’t leave it alone! The Greek root word meant the
basis of an argument or a supposition, and literally translated is “a placing
under”, hypo- meaning under and thesis meaning a placing, or a
proposition.
Yes, our word thesis came originally from the Greek, but
through Latin. In Latin thesis referred
to the unaccented syllable in poetry, and later to the stressed syllable, but
the Greek thesis always referred to a
proposition placing of an idea. It also referred to the downbeat musically,
which makes sense to this musician. While it entered English in the late 1300s,
it has come to expand beyond the meaning of a proposition to a subject for a
composition or essay, and even more commonly for a dissertation as proposed for
a degree. (My wife did a thesis for her Master’s degree. I’m not that smart.)
However, I am a musician, and only in researching this
thesis today did I learn about the thesis use in music. And the good word arsis,
as opposed to thesis. Arsis refers to the upbeat in music, the non-stressed
beat. For some reason poetry has it backward from music. In poetry the thesis
is the non-stressed part of the meter, the arsis the stressed; in music the
thesis is the stressed downbeat and the arsis the unstressed upbeat.
It is not to be used in the phrase “get your
arsis in gear”.
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