English French German Italian Portuguese Russian Spanish

Word of the Spell: Apprentice

catching hold, holding on

Word of the Spell: Apprentice

It seems appropriate that this spell's word should be

apprentice

since we're talking about undertaking an herbal apprenticeship, and about apprenticing to the plants. There's a nice parallelism, word-wise, event-wise, life-wise, with my recent initiation into the Sufi order--both are part of my "spell" nexus, and both involve setting aside my own judgments, preconceptions, and stories, and opening my ears and heart to guidance.

The "surrender" piece is so important, but let's take a look at the etymology of "apprentice" and see how there's another side to the story.

I recently showed how the word "remember" does not come from "re"+"member" as appears at first glance.

The quirk with apprentice's etymology is that it does come from Latin,  via Old French, but it didn't mean what it means to us in either one. 

It's a noun that came from a verb, and the verb is apprehendo, from which we also have "apprehend," "apprehension," "apprehensive." Before we get sidetracked into apprehensiveness = chilly with concern and angst and what does that have to do with apprenticing, please note that the "worried" nuance of these words only showed up in the very late 1700s and is an example of the human tendency to expect the worst.

Taken neutrally--and it's easiest to see with the verb--to apprehend means to "grasp, catch hold of," and so "understand." Apprehension is catching hold of a fleeing thief or of a fleeting thought. Apprehensive characterizes the sort of thing able to catch hold or understand. They're all close cousins of the descendants (comprehend, comprehension) of the closely allied Latin verb  comprehendo.

Apprentice has had that middle he smoothed over via French, and it's had an agent noun suffix added on, but it's from that same Latin verb--a later development, creating a word for the common practice of apprenticeship in the middle ages. An apprentice is one who applies her/himself, and does so by catching hold and grasping, intellectually and physically, metaphorically and literally.

But grasping what, and catching hold of what? I have a couple of possible answers. First, a little further segmentation of the original apprehendo. That app at the beginning means it's a compound of the preposition ad and the basic verb prendere (isn't it interesting that the original, basic verb doesn't have that he which gets smoothed out in our word  apprentice?) 

Ad means "to," "toward," motion (versus static orientation) toward a goal. Prendere means "to take, capture, seize." So, whereas comprehend (com="with") means taking/seizing something in the sense of encompassing it, apprehend means taking/seizing something in the sense of moving toward it.

The taking/seizing could look several ways. It could be zeroing in on a target, or a more reciprocal moving toward something and having it come to meet you. Or it could be deliberately moving into something/someone's orbit in order to be influenced.

Whichever it is, there is a connotation of motion toward. Perhaps that's why we have "apprentices," not "comprentices," who would just be embracing/grasping what came to them.

I appreciate this active, go-getting component to the concept of being an apprentice. It seems a worthy balance to the vitally important receptivity, surrender, and humility required. And perhaps the "reaching for/grasping toward" has an element of surrender in itself too. 

I reach out toward my teacher, my guide, my Murshid, this plant, this herb, this vision, and I obey what they show me.

I reach out toward the work that characterizes the path--preparing plants, performing prayers, and I hold myself to the practices as footholds in the motion toward--even if I don't know exactly toward where, trusting that the path really is the path.

About the Author

Ela Harrison

Ela is a wordsmith and herb lover who has lived in many places and currently resides in Tucson, AZ.

Leave a comment

You are commenting as guest.

FREE Newsletter

Upcoming Events

No events