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How "accepted" is this word? (meaning "therefore" from Latin). Some dictionaries seem to consider it archaic, but I've heard it on spoken on a TV show (albeit by a sophisticated character), and I think I've read it several times online. I'm curious to know if the everyday English speaker is familiar with it.
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It is used daily in the law, in my experience, and also in circles where philosophy/theology is discussed as a formal discipline, also in my experience.
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Quote:
It is used daily in the law, in my experience, and also in circles where philosophy/theology is discussed as a formal discipline, also in my experience.
ergo, I guess it's ok... 
formerly known as etaoin...
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I understand it has usage, but if I use it with an average English-speaking person who does not occupies himself with law/philosophy/theology or words, would he get it?
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I'd say you'd have a good chance. It's one of the more common Latin terms. It's interesting that the first clownish gravedigger in Hamlet uses a different form of it: argal.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Logwood, if *I know a Latin word (and I do know this one), it's safe to assume that everybody knows it.
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...says the admin of a words forum with nearly 8000 posts...
I think it's safer to use than what I originally thought though, thanks!
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stranger
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I agree that many English speakers will understand the word, but consider the effect you are trying to make. With ergo, your listeners may think you're being a bit stuffy or pompous or are trying to show off your knowledge. "Therefore" is longer, but it's the common expression in this day and age and it won't make anyone feel uncomfortable.
As for "argal", I think that Shakespeare made up the variant to indicate that his gravediggers were so uneducated they didn't know how to pronounce the word correctly. Will had great fun playing with language and was not at all above writing in dialect and creating new words. In this case, he might even be recreating a dialect that he had heard on the London streets in the 1590s.
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No no, I participate in a lot of role-playing games, so I have no intentions whatsoever to use this word IRL! it just helps in personification.
Edit: yes, it reminds me of the character Dogberry from Shakespeare's "Much Ado about Nothing". He said "suffigance" once (i.d. suffice), and I broke my head till I found out it was a mispronunciation.
Last edited by Logwood; 11/16/2005 4:35 PM.
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People might be familiar with the word ergo if they know about Descartes' famous phrase "Cogito, ergo sum" and its most frequent English translation "I think, therefore I am". Hmmm... I just figured out that Descartes would probably have written this originally in French, so my question here is, how come it is the Latin translation that became so well-known? I don't know anyone who quotes Descartes by saying "Je pense, donc je suis", or however he wrote it... 
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I guess I was under the impression that Descartes wrote in Latin,
Perhaps putting Descartes before de Horace, but what do I know?
TEd
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stranger
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I don't know that much about Descartes, but it's possible he did some of his writing in Latin. It would depend on when he did it and how he had been educated. A church background might very well have led to his writing in Latin.
I have seen it in French, but I was studying French at the time. Was it a translation or the original - je ne sais pas!
Was it Descartes whose famous last words were "I go now to the great perhaps"? If so, it would hardly indicate a religious background!
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stranger
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A quick search on the Web yields the info that Descartes lived from 1596-1650 and was educated at a Jesuit College, as well as the U. of Poitiers. The article also quoted cogito... in Latin before translating it into English. Most of the titles of his work are also listed in Latin. Ergo I assume he wrote primarily in Latin; however, one title is listed as "Traité des passions de l'âme", so he must have written some works in French. He seems to have saved French for the passionate subject matters.
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A glance at this site: http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/d/descarte.htm seems to imply that he wrote his 'scholarly' works in Latin and 'popularisations' in French.
Bingley
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Pooh-Bah
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Quote:
A glance at this site: http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/d/descarte.htm seems to imply that he wrote his 'scholarly' works in Latin and 'popularisations' in French.
Excellent site.
Never seen a picture of him before -- quite a looker.
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Mona Lisa smile, and Betti Davis eyes...
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Quote:
I don't know anyone who quotes Descartes by saying "Je pense, donc je suis", or however he wrote it...
Being the inspiration for Pope's bromide about the Pierian spring, I spent nearly 15 years saying "Je pense, donc je suis", since I knew Descartes was French and assumed that that was how he said it.
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A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
~Alexander Pope
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you know, Fr. Steve, de bonne grace, has become rather the obviousizer ex officio around here, esp. for literary allusions.
not that I'm complaining, 'cuz I'm not.
-ron o.
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Hence the epitheton ornans "Father Steve the Obviousizer ex Officio."
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Yep yep... and the Discours de la méthode in which we find the quotation "I think, therefore I am" must have been meant as a "popular" work, as it was actually written in French according to this site: Websophia Ergo, "Je pense, donc je suis", non? 
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Hence the epitheton ornans "Father Steve the Obviousizer ex Officio."
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Descartes claimed that one thing emerges as true even under the strict conditions imposed by the otherwise universal doubt: "I am, I exist" is necessarily true whenever the thought occurs to me. (Med. II) This truth neither derives from sensory information nor depends upon the reality of an external world, and I would have to exist even if I were systematically deceived. For even an omnipotent god could not cause it to be true, at one and the same time, both that I am deceived and that I do not exist. If I am deceived, then at least I am.
Although Descartes's reasoning here is best known in the Latin translation of its expression in the Discourse, "cogito, ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am"), it is not merely an inference from the activity of thinking to the existence of an agent which performs that activity. It is intended rather as an intuition of one's own reality, an expression of the indubitability of first-person experience, the logical self-certification of self-conscious awareness in any form. http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/4c.htm#cogBut, who translated it into Latin? Descartes himself?
Bingley
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Another widely used and recognized use of "ergo" is in the Latin expression "post hoc ergo propter hoc" (meaning "after this, therefor because of this). It is in common use by folks who think about reasoning, e.g. philosophers, rhetoricians and their ilk. It describes the logical fallacy of coincidental correlation: the asserton that, because one thing happens after another thing, the second thing was caused by the first thing ... which it wasn't ... necessarily.
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Aha! I found the character who said it. The school's therapist (Dr. Pevon?) in "felicity"... I, er, don't watch it of course (no no no no no no no no no!), but that's the kinda crappy TV shows you get around here.
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