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Post by joustos on Oct 1, 2020 22:24:45 GMT
Page 1
On different days, weather and health permitting, I am going to write a tract (small treatise) about the field of study or investigation called "Logology" (= the study of Discourse or Speeches). What I call Philology used to be called, on occasions, Philology, and it was believed that the divine Hermes was the father of Philology or the first philologist (and the father of instrumental music, succeeded in music by the divine Apollo). {Notice how I have been packing information and realize that you are doing philology. This speaking/writing style of mine is not poetic and is not pleasant.} I have never taken courses in linguistics or etymology. So, I will not regurgitate things I learned formally. However, for years I have been doing etymology of words of many languages such as my native language, Anglo-Saxon (Old English), Basque, Eblaite (Canaanitic Syriac), and obscure Etruscan (which I translated -- made clear -- by doing the etymology of many of its words). What is an etymology and how is it done? This is one thing I will discuss and exemplify, so that some readers can become apprendices of the art of etymology and practise it for their native language, if so they wish.
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Post by joustos on Oct 2, 2020 18:37:21 GMT
Page 2
You asked, or I asked for you, "What is an etymology?" I produced an answer last night when I went to bed, but I was not in the mood to get up and write it on the computer. Anyway, while I was answering the questions on Page 1, I questioned some answers which I resolved by consulting, a few moments ago, the online Liddell&Scott A Greek-English Lexicon, since we are dealing with Greek words. I will preface the story of my undertakings by a short story or a discourse (logos, in Greek) about the word "language".
PREFACE: Some time ago, some people realized that the word "language" means (denotes, refers to) different things, namely (1) speaking, uttering words; the systematic organization of the words used in speaking; using words which have a specific ethnic character, wherefore we have a French language, an English language, etc., and (2) done speakings (memories of utterances or words), wherefore we have a Lexicon (vocabulary, summary or compendium of ethnic words) and a Grammar. // The point is that a word can tacitly refer to something that is in the making (in process, in fieri) or that is done, accomplished, or completed. However, sometimes a thing is described as being in the making or as being made (completed), as in the case of medieval philosopher Eurigena, who spoke of Nature (the physical world), in Latin, as Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata. In doing so, he coined verbs out of a noun, for the present participle ending (-ens) expresses process, and the past participle ending (-ata) expresses completion.(Translation: Natura Naturans = Nature in the making. Natura Naturata= Accomplished/matured Nature.) Intentionally or not, he was conceiving Nature in the likes of a living thing, which grows or develops its nature/essence [apple-tree-ness, or humanity, …) and then attains what we call its nature. Today, the development in question is called speciation (the formation of what characterizes a species/type of animals or plants). Growth or development (a process) is what the Greek philosopher Anaximander (6th Century B.C.) saw and named PHYSIS. This word is a verbal noun, as it is coined out of the verb Phyo (Fieri, in Latin) which means "to grow, to become, to emerge, to be born". However, Physis was translated into Latin as Natura, since this word is a verbal noun coined from the verb "Nascor/Natus) which means "to be born". // Reference can be tacit (silent) or voiced. // To continue.
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Post by joustos on Oct 4, 2020 21:07:32 GMT
Page 3 Continuation of Page 1 (whether Page 2 is needed or not): In the title of the story I have been writing, I stated Logology (or Philology) as comprising or consisting of Linguistics and Etymologies (or, I should have stated, "Etymology"), and we asked, "What is Linguistics?" and "What are Etymologies?"
--- Linguistics has been called or defined as a generic study or investigation of Language [Speaking] OR [Cf. Page ], I would say, the investigation of what is spoken/done. The findings/results of the investigation which are collected into books called Grammar and Lexicon.
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Post by joustos on Oct 5, 2020 1:53:50 GMT
Page 4 Continuation of Page 3:
To repeat and correct, --- Linguistics has been called or defined as Grammar (since "grammarians" and even logicians, have been said said to divulge information about the nature/constitution of language). Anyway, what today we are calling Linguistics is the study or examination of Speaking OR [Cf., refer to, Page 2 for some distinctions] I would say, the examination of what is spoken or said -- what is in process and what is done! The findings or learnings [Mathemata, in Greek] from the study are collected in books called the Grammar and the Lexicon (vocabulary) of a language. {For a person to learn a language that is not his native language, while he stays at home, he has to learn the grammar and vocabulary of that language. In this manner, he can compose what he wants to say rather than regurgitate memorized questions and answer. He who composes his own language/speaking necessarily thinks in that language, rather than keep on translating his native language. Human thinking, especially in post-puberty life, is linguistic; that is, it is done by means of words (meaningful sounds, not visual images or tactile impressions). Thinking, said Plato, is conversing with oneself. And we already know that a conversation is linguistic, even when a mute person has learned to translate words into gestures, or when we write, rather than sound off, words. So, we have Sign (Signal) Languages and Written (Glyphic) Languages. Our speaking languages are Sonoric Languages and, hence, audible languages for people who are not deaf.
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Post by joustos on Oct 5, 2020 15:29:13 GMT
Page 5 Substantive Continuation of Page 4; that is, the continued treatment of the matter/subject that was treated on P.4:
As I have been thinking of many things, What should I say first? That is, What is most appropriate to say in order to continue treating what I treated on Page 4? Here is my first talk or (forensic) speech about speech/discourse:
On Page 4, I used the phrase, "Written (Glyphic) Languages", where obviously the parenthetically written word "Glyphic" means or is intended to mean "Written". There is something wrong with this, since for Europeans in the pre-typing era, "to write" is to use a pen, a pencil, or a brush to produce images (alphabetical letters), and since Europeans and Egyptians produced images of things or of alphabetical letters by carving (making incisions into) flat stones. These carvings or incisions are also called "glyphs", whereas the drawings or paintings of images are called "graphs" (in Greek). In fact, the English "To Write" = the Greek "Graphein", which = "to draw, to delineate, to paint". So, in order not to identify writing with carving, I should have said, "Written (Glyphic or Graphic) Languages). // Identifying one thing With, or Assimilating one thing To, another is a mental activity which is usually not made evident in speaking; however, I make it evident (I posit it) by saying, "... or …" or else by writing "...(…)". This "or else" = "alternatively made evident".
Here is my second talk about discourse: A moment ago, I said, "What should I say first?" Now, I am sure this is understood by one who knows English; however, this is grammatically incorrect, because "first" is an adjective and is approprietly used to describe a thing, as in this case, "F is the first letter of the graphic word FIRST". Well, since "saying" is an activity or a verb, I should have used an adverb such as "*firstly" (which I just coined analogously with "quickly") or "primarily". The word "primarily" (which means "in the first place") is an adverb that is based on the Latin adjective "Primus" (which means the same thing as First, Prime, Protos in other languages).
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Post by joustos on Oct 5, 2020 21:22:08 GMT
Page 6 Continuation of Page 1:
-- What are Etymologies? What is Etymology? What we call "etymology" may have been called/named differently in the course of European history since Plato, but whatever name may have been used, it would have been the name of some field of linguistic studies/investigations -- which "etymology" is. In fact, Plato of Athens and another Greek before him, Pherecydes of Syros, had a problem of understanding: They did not know the meaning of the names of their gods. Plato, who was a philosopher (a lover/seeker of true knowledge), started searching for the meaning of those obscure names (which are words). For example, he started investigating the name "Apollon". He knew that this was the name of a god, that the name denotes (is the name of) a god, but what did this name mean? Does it mean " Shining God"?, for certainly some Greeks had identified Apollo with the Sun (Helios, in Greek). So, Plato set out to consider myths or tales about Apollo, which describe Him, and, as he says in his dialogue "Cratylus", he found a word which sounds almost like 'Apollon' , "apolouon" and means "purifier''. So, Plato concluded that the name "Apollon" means "purifier". [Unfortunately, as I fully demonstrated in my manuscript, this conclusion is fallacious, wrong. I analysed Plato's reasoning process by which he arrived at a conclusion But my present concern is to speak of the method Plato used to find the meaning of an obscure word: He picked up a clear (meaningful) word in his Greek Vocabulary, an epithet, that sounds like --or, in writing, looks like -- the obscure word and transferred its meaning to the obscure word. He took the epithet (or a predicate) to name what a thing is -- to name the quiddity or nature of a thing. Wrong procedure!]
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Post by joustos on Oct 6, 2020 3:15:11 GMT
Page 7 Alteration and Substantive Continuation of Page 6:
-- What are etymologies? What is etymology? Plato's method to find or to get to know the meaning of a word can be called the Transfusion Method since he took the meaning of a clear word and transferred it to an obscure word. He must have thought that this is a proper procedure since the two words are compatible: They sound in the same or almost same way. Incidentally, two words that are similar or almost similar in sound have been called Homophones. Two words or names that are similar or almost similar in meaning have been called Synonyms. Two words that are similar or almost similar in both sound and meaning have been [improperly] called Cognates, that is, "born/conceived together" (like two identical twins). They should be called Isomorphs.
There is another way or method to find the meaning of a word. As a meaningful word may be inside a word, all one has to do is to dissect or partition the compound word and thus discover the interior meaningful word (which is called ETYM or Etymon in Greek. But if one does not know/understand a foreign language, he cannot identify the components and, therefore, he does not know how to partition a word. On the other hand, if you know that "etymon" = "meaningful particle of speech", you can easily partition the Greek word "etymologia" into "etymo + logia" and realize that this Greek word means "study or discussion of meaning". So, an etymology is, like a theorem or an argument, a set of mental activities which result in the discovery of the meaning of a word. // By the way, now you realized that the makers (and possibly the speakers) of the Greek language and of the English language, but not necessarily of very other language, coined compound words!
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Post by joustos on Oct 6, 2020 18:04:38 GMT
Page 8 Substantive Continuation [not a mere sequence] of Page 7:
{I continue thinking and speaking in my convoluted/compact, not smooth/loose, way -- probably because sometimes I work out a story or a talk in my mind before saying it or writing it. So, I realize that it must be unpleasant for a reader. Sorry!} A moment ago I said that Plato's method/procedure to find the meaning of a name or of a word can be called "Transfusional Method". So, if "etymology" means or is taken to mean "investigation/search for the meaning of a word", then an actu heal etymology that is done in the Platonic fashion can be called a "Transfusional Etymology". For instance, a British linguist made a tranfusional etymology of the name "Apollo(n)": He realized that this Greek word sounds like the English word "Apple" and concluded that they are synonyms (isonyms), namely, names that have the same meaning, and that Apollon is the name of a fruit. Was he wrong, too? Plato was wrong for considering (looking at) the word "Apollon" in respect to its sound, whereas he considered the word "Apoloyon" in respect to its meaning. The English linguist made the same type of mistake and specifically because he arbitrarily picked up one of the meanings of the word "Apple". Of course, we usually take the word "Apple" to be the name of a fruit, but in the history of English speaking, it is the name of anything that is round, such as an apple, the pupil of the eye, and so forth. // { I have coined some new words, such as "Transfusional Method". A word or phrase that consists of single words is called a "complex word". A new word -- a word that is added to a vocabulary of a language, is called a "neologism" -- a new speaking unit.}
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Post by joustos on Oct 6, 2020 20:38:07 GMT
Page 9 Substantive Continuation of Page 7:
The second method/way to find the meaning of a word (which thereafter is called a compound word) can be called the Introspective Method, inasmuch as the seeker looks into a word in the hope of finding a meaningful component. As I pointed out, it is difficult, if not impossible at all, to properly partition a word when we do not know that it is made up of components. Anyway, if an etymology is done introspectively, it can be called "Introspective Etymology. Furthermore, an introspective etymologist might make a fallacious inference (as to what a word means) because the internal meaningful word may have various meanings (or: it is virtually a plurality of meaningful words).
To notice that in the English language, or in linguistics, the word "Term" is used to mean/denote "Section Of A Compound Word" or "Component Of A Complex Word" and possibly "Aspect Of A Word [sonority; sense/meaningfulness; ethnicity] So, in a while I will treat of/deal with the kinds of terms that exist in compound words. In saying "the ethnicity of a word" I wander whether, for instance, a word was coined/originated by an English tribe or people, or it was borrowed from a different people... and slightly modified by English speakers.
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Post by joustos on Oct 6, 2020 23:30:23 GMT
Page 10 Continuation of Page 9:
It's not a while yet... So, in the interlude, I will make some sideline remarks: I have become intrigued by the conception of "the ethnicity of words." So, I ask, Is "etymology" an English-born word? We can see that it is similar (in sound and in writing) to the Greek word "etymologia", but the differences are obvious: The English G sounds as in "Gentry" whereas the Greek G sounds as in "Ghent", and, the terminal sound or letter of Etymologia is truncated (cut off), while the i is written as y in the English word. So what? The point is that I could say, "Some Englishman borrowed/adopted the Greek word but, in saying it, he, wittingly or not, altered it" or "Some Greek modified the English word so that it would sound or look like other Greek words". We do not know which proposition is true, but we may find historical facts that give evidence for the truth of either proposition. In the past, one who believed that, for example, the English word came from the Greek word by borrowing was likely to think that, on account of the similarities (analogous to the similarities of a mother and her daughter), the English word in question descended from the Greek word. So, he would think that he was "deriving the English word from a foreign word, and that the method to find the origin of a word (or the procedure to do the etymology of an ethnic word) consists in discovering the semantic (meaning-wise) similarities of foreign words. So, this can be called the Analogical Method, and this type of etymology can be called Analogical Etymology. Beware, a lexical (verbal, word-) derivation -- an etymologist's work -- is not an account of a historical/real derivation, whereas a man's physiognomy/look may historically derive from a parent's physiognomy. Similarly, the mental dialectical processes that Fichte described are not copies (similitudes) of dialectical processes of Being or of History (as others inferred). Fallacies occur in any field of discourse.
The above-used word "Lexical" is an adjective which was coined/formed out the Greek word "Lexis" [sounded Leksis], which means "(a) Speaking or (a) Speech; Single Word; a Word used in only one respect [as in respect of sonority, sense, or ethnicity]. This Greek word is based on, was created/coined out of the verb "Lego", which is also the basis of "Logos". The etym of Lego (= to speak, etc.) is "Leg" or the variant "Lek-". The going from the sound "gh" to the sound "k" is called a sound or phonetic shift, which obviously occurs in people of the same ethnicity, who are biologically kins. The shift does not occur because of some difference in the larynx or in the tongue of these people, or because of some law of Nature. // The ancient Greek People consisted of many tribes or ethikons, The Ionians, the Oeolians, the Dorians, etc., and we may not assume that they were originally one tribe that created one language, one religion, one legal system, one type of music, etc. actually, what Ionians uttered as E, in various instances the Dorians as A. So, the Greek vocabulary has synonymous pairs of ethnic words, like Meter and Mater. {Only in the Hebrew Bible there is the theory that originally there was only one tribe, which had one language. And lo and behold, some linguists have attempted to derive the historical languages of the world from Hebrew or from Semitic (Hebrew -kindred) languages. I have demonstrated that their etymologies are fallacious.}
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Post by joustos on Oct 7, 2020 17:26:57 GMT
Page 11 A discussion about Etymology:
A Vocabulary is a list of words [vocabula in Latin] which are voiced (uttered) by the people of a tribe or a nation. Hence, "a list of ethnic words". A Dictionary is a list of words [dicta in Latin] which are said by people, that is, words which are made or coined (shaped) by people. However, a simple dictionary defines (expresses the meaning of) the words it lists; a dictionary that deals also with the origination (genesis) of the listed words is called "Etymological Dictionary" rather than something like "Genesis-Expounding Dictionary" or "Geneticismic Dictionary". If I had called it "Genetic Dictionary", I would have saying something similar to "genetic disease", that is, "dictionary one is born with". ["Genetic" = "Pertaining to genesis (generation, birth-giving)".] Well, the point of this long story or discussion of mine is that the people who started saying "Etymological Dictionary" understood "etymology" as (or took "etymology of a word" to mean "the story/account of the generation/making of a word." If Greek for "word" is " logos", then "word-making" is "logo-poiesis", and a "made word" -- a poetic word -- is a poem. (Of course, for the ancient Greeks a poem was a logos/discourse that has a certain sound-wise quality, a musical quality. In fact, by "music" they meant the repeated rhythm of verses such as "There the boat goes / Where the river flows". The lengths of the sounds in the second verse are the same as the lengths of the sounds I the first verse. A Greek dance is rhythmic in the same way: it consists of long steps and short steps. Incidentally, in modern languages, a poem is a set of verses that rhyme. The two verses I just produced rhyme, which means that their terminal words or syllables are consonant: "goes" and "flows" have identical sounds, namely "-oes" and "-ows". To add: These two sounds are accentuated, as the voice falls there strongly. This kind of falling is called Cadence, since the Latin word Cadere means To Fall. The phrases of modern European music are "cadential", whereas the phrases or verse of ancient Greek and Latin poems and instrumental music are plain/flat. A sung poem that is musically plain is called a "plainchant" ("cantus planus" in medieval latin).
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Post by joustos on Oct 7, 2020 20:33:39 GMT
Page 11 A discussion about Etymology:
A Vocabulary is a list of words [vocabula in Latin] which are voiced (uttered) by the people of a tribe or a nation. Hence, "a list of ethnic words". A Dictionary is a list of words [dicta in Latin] which are said by people, that is, words which are made or coined (shaped) by people. However, a simple dictionary defines (expresses the meaning of) the words it lists; a dictionary that deals also with the origination (genesis) of the listed words is called "Etymological Dictionary" rather than something like "Genesis-Expounding Dictionary" or "Geneticismic Dictionary". If I had called it "Genetic Dictionary", I would have been saying something similar to "genetic disease", that is, "dictionary one is born with". ["Genetic" = "Pertaining to genesis (generation, birth-giving)".] Well, the point of this long story or discussion of mine is that the people who started saying "Etymological Dictionary" understood "etymology" as (or took "etymology of a word" to mean) "the story/account of the generation/making of a word." If Greek for "word" is " logos", then "word-making" is "logo-poiesis", and a "made word" -- a poetic word -- is a poema/poem. (Of course, for the ancient Greeks a poem was a logos/discourse that has a certain sound-wise quality, a musical quality. In fact, by "music" they meant the repeated rhythm of verses such as "There the boat goes / Where the river flows". The lengths of the sounds in the second verse are the same as the lengths of the sounds in the first verse. A Greek dance is rhythmic in the same way: it consists of long steps and short steps. Incidentally, in modern languages, a poem is a set of verses that rhyme. The two verses I just produced rhyme, which means that their terminal words or syllables are consonant: "goes" and "flows" have identical sounds, namely "-oes" and "-ows". To add: These two sounds are accentuated, as the voice falls there strongly. This kind of falling is called Cadence, since the Latin word Cadere means To Fall. The phrases of modern European music are "cadential", whereas the phrases or verses of ancient Greek and Latin poems and instrumental music are plain/flat. A sung poem that is musically plain is called a "plainchant" ("cantus planus" in medieval Latin). The two types of music are frequently called Tonal and Modal respectively, in respect to the used music scales. The so-called Atonal music is actually Non-cadential and dissonant music -- a stonatura (distonality), created by tone-deaf people, analogous to color-blind painters.
This is Page 12 Corrected and augmented Page 11:
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Post by joustos on Oct 8, 2020 16:41:30 GMT
Page 13 Substantive Continuation of Page 12 (which is the corrected Page 11), whose topic [subject of discussion] is "A Discussion About Etymology"
There I an "Online Etymological Dictionary", which is quite useful for English speakers since it lists English words. So, because it lists words of this kind, it may be called "ethnic dictionary". However, this would be an improper way of speaking, because "ethic dictionary means "tribal dictionary" -- a dictionary that a tribe produces. To say that it is a dictionary of ethic words, we have to coin a different adjective such as "ethnic-word-" or "ethnicistic". But if we know what we intend to say (what we mean) and what others understand by "ethnic dictionary", we may as well use this complex word. In that case, the word "ethnic" qualifies [states the quality of] the items in a dictionary rather than the physical dictionary itself. {I will only later expound the theory of "Suppositio" or of the orientations that an adjective or a predicate or a name can have. We have also the theory or knowledge of the fact that sometimes a speaker says that a named person or a named thing does what actually a speaker does to a substance or to a word. That's what I call the theory of "Attribute Transference". Amen!}
Back to the topic of my discourse: In the Online Etymological Dictionary, what kind of etymology is done? Here is what the(that) dictionary usually gives or proffers (puts forwards): (1) The meaning of the entered word by using what I called the "analogical method". For example, I looked up the word "Game" and I saw its explation by using foreign words whose meaning is know. One of the explanatory words used is the northern French [or Frankonian] word "Gambe" which is closely similar to the English "Ghame" -- and incidentally very similar to the Italian "Gamba" -- and means "leg". So, a game is a leg or, we may imagine, a *legging, a set of leg movements. In this case, the author of this etymology, took the idea of "leg-play" and generalized it into the play (the moving around) of anything, such as "foot-play [as in a football game or in a soccer game] or "hand-play" [as in a hand-ball game or in a billiard game]. Critique: Is that etymology valid? Generally speaking, No, because the bridge for the transference of a meaning is the similarity of the sounds of the two words. Similarly, if I take two bottles, A and B, that are identical in shape and contain liquids, if I transfer oil from A to B, can I say that B's own liquid is wine? No, because probably B's own unknown liquid is water, but the one who put the oil in B can say that B contains oil. (A word may have different meanings, whether aboriginally or by importation!)
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Post by joustos on Oct 8, 2020 20:44:20 GMT
Page 14
The online dictionary in question is written in a simple style, rather than in a convoluted style such as my above one, which, I realize, must make it difficult for the reader to follow the discourse. (I say too many things within a limited space or time. Patience, my friends, and … I will not do now an etymology of the word "patience", which I was tempted to do immediately. However, I know I try to write accurately, that is, to provide enough information and to structure statements (like "I will NOT do", with NOT in the third place of the statement/locution, according to the English convention, for the sake of being understood by an English reader. You see, I just thought that the orderly placement of words in places is as important as the placement of numerals in designated places in order to acquire the true meaning of a number (a word). Conversely, the word "two thousand fifty-one" is properly written down as "/ / /2/ /5/1./", that is, "2051". Punctuation is equally important. Right placing, right punctuating, etc., are "orthographic" actions we perform. You may have studied orthography, the correct way of writing. However, what "orthography" means in a school where you learn how to write the Greek language is one of two things: (a) the right way of drawing or painting certain pictures (the alphabetical letters), and (b) the right way of notating or drawing a certain alphabetical letter to represent one sound (phoneme) of a spoken word. To read a written word means to produce the sounds which the notes or alphabetical letters represent. (In the field of music, a piano player looks at the written notes of a page and strikes the sound-engendering keys that correspond to sounds/tones. Writing and reading are inverse actions, whose study belongs to Psychology.
Meanwhile, I asked myself, Why is my writing style often "convoluted"? Because my thinking is often convoluted, that is, some of my thoughts get rolled in (in-volved) in other thoughts. On the other hand, thinking is "linear" when thoughts stay in succession as on a straight line. The online etymology writer in question was thinkin linearly. {Enough psychology for one day!}
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Post by joustos on Oct 9, 2020 2:12:07 GMT
Page 15 Resuming the discussion, on Page 13, about the word "Game" in the "Online Etymological Dictionary":
(2) While stating various European words that, sound-wisely, resemble the sound "Game", the Dictionary adduces (brings in) information about the times (years or centuries) and places (countries) where the analogs were written down (not when they began to exist), possibly about historical situations when the analogs were written down, and about the ways in which "Game" has been used in English sentences/statements. Using a word in a sentence is "using a word in a context" since a sentence may contain names of people, of places, of times, of known historical events, of deeds, of activities, etc., wherefore one may be able to determine the specific meaning of the word "Game". Thus, circumstantial evidence is provided for judging what the true meaning of the word "Game" is. [Not for nothing a linguistic "sentence" is also called a "judgment".] {Kant discussed the nature of true and false judgments; linguists speak of the meaningfulness or the meaninglessness of sentences. I can say that their interests respectively are Epistemological and Semantical, as Epistemology is the theory of true and false knowledge, and Semantics is the theory of, discourse on, meaning.} So, in view of what that Dictionary etymologist does, what is the doing of "etymology(cal)" of a word? It is the search for the indigenous meaning of a word by accumulating information/knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the birth or the use of the word in question. I will tentatively say that this method I "semiotic", as what has been called "Semiotics" is the theory of the uses of a word or a phrase.
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