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ANNOYING BURDENS

5/15/2019

1 Comment

 
As a student of Spanish, it's always weird to me to see the word molestar, which means "to annoy". My English-oriented brain always jumps to the word molest, which obviously is much worse. As you may expect, the two words are related, in this case through the Latin word molestare, which also had a meaning of "annoy". The connection to the modern word may be found in Old French molester, which meant something more like "torment" or "harass" and eventually shifted in meaning to give us the sexual abuse definition. The adjectival form of molestare, molestus, meant something like "burdensome" and links us to the noun form, moles, meaning "mass" or "boulder" (the idea being that a large rock was burdensome to travelling). That, finally, derives from Proto-Indo-European meh, "to exert".
1 Comment
Anna
4/17/2020 11:23:36 am

I made a comment on line about the word pedophile, pedophilia and that since this word originates from the latin pedo=child & philia =friendly love, or friendship. I found it disturbing that we would use a word that basically means love child, or friendly love with a child or friendship with a child to be used in the main stream for someone who rapes, tortures,kidnaps and or murders children.
Also the word pedophilia is used in medical terminology to mean a disease or illness that the person cannot control since it is considered a medical problem.
So why not use a more appropriate word. Someone mentioned using child molester. And that is actually what was used until pedophile became popular.
I am just someone who finds it interesting to check out ther origins of words and their original meanings. I find it fascinating. I'm a far cry from being grammatically correct & in no way educated or knowledgeable in this field.
Now I am on your site and wondering what you think? P.S. when I wrote about it I was slammed as someone who wants to protect these psycho's and that I am of suspicious character. I was shocked to receive such nasty replies to my comment about the pedophilia. Anyway, just wondering what you think about using child molester as was the accepted term until quite recently. I believe words have energy and we should be careful what energy we put out there. Thank you

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    Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic. I have a linguistics degree from Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote my thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy traveling, trivia, philosophy, board games, conlanging, and art history. 

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