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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Babylon was the first real metropolitan city of the world and has always been connected with opulence, whealth, luxury, whores and sin. Babylon's other associated issue, the confusion of tongues, has always triggered my imagination:
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children built. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
(9) Did Babel historically mean 'confused language' and did the words babble, babbelen, babillage, bavarder come from that ancient source too?
(maybe discussed before)
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Joined: Dec 2006
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Dec 2006
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I found This in the OED
babble: early 13c., babeln "to prattle," akin to other Western European words for stammering and prattling (cf. Swedish babbla, O.Fr. babillier) attested from the same era, some of which probably were borrowed from others, but etymologists cannot now determine which were original. Probably imitative of baby-talk, in any case (cf. L. babulus "babbler," Gk. barbaros "non-Greek-speaking"). "No direct connexion with Babel can be traced; though association with that may have affected the senses" [OED]. Meaning "to repeat oneself incoherently, speak foolishly" is attested from early 15c.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Perhaps in a similar fashion that the Romans heard the
invaders' languages and mocked it as a lot of bar-bar-bar
giving rise to the word "barbarian", or so I hear.
----please, draw me a sheep----
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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or so I hear
It's the Greeks the story is about for barbarian is in origin a Greek word βαρβαρος (barbaros). The etymology for Babylon with which I am most familiar is from the Akkadian babilu 'gate of the gods', the -ilu being cognate with Arabic ʔallāh and Hebrew ʔel both meaning 'god'. I am sure that the verb babble in English and other Germanic languages was influence by the story of the Tower of Babel.
On another note, there was another Babylon in Classical times: the Roman town of Babylon, in present-day Cairo, Egypt. The Arabic name comes from ʔal-qāhira. 'the victorious'.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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