Word of the Week: "Origin"

As another week passes and as I reflect on where I/you/we/humankind/this blog came from and where we're going, I follow my tried and trusted path back into words and etymologies. 

In honor of the movie I reviewed and recommended in my previous post, and in honor of that recurrent question, the word of the week is Origin.

Origin = source, starting point, where something came from. The Latin root is origin- but the nominative form--the form you'd find it under in the dictionary--is origo. Origo, -- original, ike vertigo -- vertiginous, found in English both ways, or imago -- imaginis and we have image, imagine, imaginary wonder world.

See that "vert" on vertigo? It means "to turn," just like "advert," "avert" (turning toward and away from). In other words, the -go on the end is turning a verb into a noun. Same thing with origo. The verb at the origin of "origin" means "to rise," or "to move," and it's the same verb from which we get orient. The orient literally is "the rising" -- the direction from which the sun rises.

So, in the way of thinking that created this word, origin or source is what starts from the ground and rises up (where the earth was flat and the sun rose), and origin or source was also, in terms of time, the beginning of the day as measured by light.

A further twist with its use in English: the ground from which you rise up--your origin--becomes your sense of direction--your orientation. Source and direction are aspects of the same thing.

I'm going to meditate on that, and I invite your thoughts as well.  Sometimes the best meditation is walking barefoot in the river washes in town, feet in the sandy ground that is origin, my body rising from the ancestry of waterthat carves a channel to direct me, in motion, energy rising through my crown as if through a whale's spout.

"Crown" is indigo. Indigo  is not formed like origo -- originis and it has nothing whatsoever to do with indigenous, which literally means "born in this place." Indigo comes from the adjective indicus, meaning "from India" (whence the color dye was obtained), just like the font style italic means "from Italy."

One more, though, to tie it together. If origin means "place of rising" (my rising, or the sun's), we start from the ground up. My bare feet in the river wash. Well, and the plant "plantain" is plantago -- plantaginis, where the -go is added to the word meaning "sole of the foot." And all over the world, since this plant grows all over the world, its common names are things to do with footprints, whether or not the culture might have known about the Latin word!

Wherever I plant my feet, from there I am rising, I am moving, I can set my direction.