Bliss or Bless? Idyllic or Euphoric?

Last week, following up on my use of the word nirvana, I used the words idyllic and euphoria. While Nirvana refers to a state of perfection and heaven to a perfect place, idyllic and euphoria refer to very nice feelings.

Idyllic actually means “like an idyll.” An idyll is a writing that describes a pastoral scene or event or anything charming and simple. So idyllic means “charmingly simple or rustic.” Idyll has been used in English since about 1600, and came from the Latin word idyllium, which came from the Greek word eidyllion that meant a short, descriptive poem, usually of a rustic or pastoral scene. Eidyllion is the diminutive form of eidos and literally means “a little picture.” It was not until the late 1700s that the adjective idyllic came into use, originally only to mean “pertaining to an idyll” but in 1831 to refer to anything simple and charming or rustic.

Euphoria is a state of intense happiness and self-confidence. It was first used in English in 1727 as a physician’s term for feeling healthy and comfortable. It comes from medical Latin, from the Greek word euphoria, that means “power of enduring easily.” The Greek word is formed from combining “eu,” that means “well,” with “pherein,” that means “to carry.” We also get the word infer from pherein.  Euphoria’s non-medical use did not develop until 1882 and is now the predominant use.

In psychology euphoria is a term used in pathology to describe the manic state in those diagnosed as bipolar, in whom the normal euphoric state is exaggerated.

I also used the word bliss in last week’s post. Bliss means supreme happiness or utter joy or complete contentment. It, like heaven, is an Old English word (blis or bliðs) carried through into Modern English. It originally referred mostly to earthly happiness, as opposed to bless, which has a heavenly connotation.

Bless is also Old English in origin (bletsian, bledsian), and came from the Proto-Germanic word blodison that meant “hallow and/or mark with blood.” Blessing, according to etymonline.com,  was originally “a blood sprinkling on pagan altars. This word was chosen in Old English bibles to translate [the] Latin benedicere and [the] Greek eulogein, both of which have a ground sense of ‘to speak well of, to praise,’ but were used in Scripture to translate [the] Hebrew brk ‘to bend (the knee), worship, praise, invoke blessings.’”

While we're following up, I recently used a word that was unknown to my wife: obstreperous. It means resisting control or restraint in a difficult or unruly manner. It has been used in English since about 1600, when it was adopted from the Latin word obstreperus. The Latin word means clamorous, and is formed from ob- (meaning "against") and strepere (meaning "make a noise"). So in Latin being obstreperous is making a noise against something, or not resisting quietly. It is similar to words found in the post "Annoying Stubborn Bullies."