2701: Gardens, Orchards, and Paradise May 13, 2024

It’s lovely to sit in an orchard, though far less lovely sounding to sit in a wort-yard, yet this is what it would have been called in Old English ortgeard. 'Wort' in this case simply means ‘plant’, still seen at the end of many plant names, like butterwort, woundwort, and spearwort. However, etymologically speaking, there is an even better sounding orchard-word: paradise. 

Paradise comes to English ultimately from the Avestan (Persian) word pairidaēza, meaning “enclosed garden” but in Ancient Greek παράδεισος (parádeisos) meant “palace gardens”. Because of this lofty definition, this word became associated with the Garden of Eden and by extension heaven (e.g. Dante’s Paradiso), displacing the enigmatic Old English word ‘neorxnawang’. These biblical connotations to ‘paradise’ do not exist in the doublet ‘parvis’ (i.e. “cathedral gardens”) but coincidentally came in the Hebrew פרדס (pardes) took on extra, spiritualism, while in Modern Hebrew still denotes an orchard.

2536: Bad Censorship (by Catholics) Nov 22, 2021

Catholic censors of the Talmud (the compilation of Jewish oral-law) were tasked with removing sections that the Church didn't like, but often with a clear lack of understanding of the language. In one instance, these censors were told to replace any use of גוי (goi) which literally just means 'nation' with עכו"ם (akum), an acronym עבודת כוכבים ומזלות (avdos cochavim u'mazlos) meaning 'worshiper of stars and constellations', including replacing a quote from Exodus גוי קדוש (goy kadosh) meaning 'holy nation' referring to the Jewish people. This resulted in a quote from the Bible being rewritten as "holy star worshipers" by the Catholics.

2308: Nuns vs Sisters Apr 11, 2021

Christian nuns and sisters (in the ecclesiastical sense) may have more or less the same roles, they actually are different. Nuns take solemn vows while religious sisters take simple vows, one main difference of which is that sisters can own property and other capital. This means they are free to make endeavors in certain vocational areas like charity, education, and health. Nuns—the term for which comes from the Latin 'nonna': literally (female) monk—tend to live in the enclosure of an order and are not involved in those affairs.