While looking for something I'd written and subsequently lost today, I scanned through one of those huge files in which my old sent mail is buried and found this:

Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 21:50:34
Subject: Further Implications
From: Charles Bertsch <cbertsch@email.arizona.edu>
To: postwar@listserv.arizona.edu

Hi all,

While speaking to two of you today, I conjectured that "fault" might be derived from the same root as "fold." This is NOT the case, as further research has revealed. And to think that I was accusing Mr. Heidegger of playing fast and loose with etymology. . . :-(

However, there are a number of other interesting words we failed to mention that ARE derived from the same root as "fold" worth and that are worth musing over:

1) "to ply"

2) "manifold"

3) "to flex"

4) "pliers"

5) "explicate"

6) "pliant"

7) "multiple"

8) "double"

and, best of all

9) "duplicity"


Two other sets of false friends -- according to my conservative sources -- are words in the family that gives us "full," "plenitude," and "supply" and those in the family that gives us "fold" as in "He brought us into the fold" or "sheepfold."

(I suspect, however, that there may be a deep, dark shared root between the former set and the "ply/fold" family)

Interesting, isn't it, that "multiple" has positive connotations in our society but "duplicity" and "doubling" have negative ones. Many = good;
Two = bad.

Best,

Charlie

Talk about your origami time capsules. . .

Tags: archive, autobiography, etymology, nostalgia
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