The word profane is another example of unfortunate elevation of a profane term to the theosphere[1] of religion. Today, this English adjective is glossed as unclean, treating sacred things with contempt, disrespect, irreverence, or scorn, blasphemous, ritually impure, unholy, desecrating a holy place or thing, un-ecclesiastical, secular, not devoted to sacred purposes, unhallowed. As a verb, to profane means to violate (something sacred), treat with abuse, irreverence, obloquy, or contempt, desecrate, put to a wrong or unworthy use, debase, abuse defile. I will use it to illustrate how ideology may drive etymology, semiotics, and linguistics in general, not to say human population migration theory, history, archeology, and anthropology.
The term is said to derive directly from
Latin profanus, also spelled prophanus in Medieval Latin. Profanus
and prophanus meant unholy, not sacred, not consecrated; of persons, not
initiated; whence, in Late Latin, ignorant, unlearned, wicked, impious,
non-religious, unclean. The Latin profanus (or prophanus), always
according to modern dictionaries, derives from the phrase pro fano,
literally out in front of the temple, perhaps with a sense of not being admitted into
the temple with the initiates. It is split into pro, before,
from PIE root *per- (1), forward, hence in front of, before, and fānō,
ablative of fānum meaning Temple, from PIE root *dhes-, forming
words for religious concepts[2].
The roots *dhēs-, *dhes-, or *dhh1s
(gift) from PIE *dhe- (to set, put), are supposed to have given not only
the Greek θεός (theos; god, deity, divinity, authority, abstract thing,
natural phenomenon) and its apparent cognates theist, -theism, theo-, etc., but also less
direct derivatives like fedora (a corruption of Theodora[3]),
enthusiasm, fair, fanatic, ferial, feast, -fest,
festal, festival, festive, festoon, fete, fiesta,
and tiffany.
The term fedora, now referring to a
hat style, derives from a fictitious character (princess Fedora
Romanov) created by the French playwriter Victorien Sardou in 1882
If Theo- derived from *dhh1s,
and *dhh1s meant gift
The inclusion of enthusiasm is
another potential source of bias in the phonetic or semantic calculations
leading to or deriving from PIE *dhh1s and
related roots of religious concepts. The Ancient Greek cognate verb ἐνθουσιάζω
(enthousiazō; to inspire, be inspired, be in ecstasy, be
enthusiastic) has been glossed with religious connotations, i.e., possessed by
a god, and might have genuinely been used as such in later religious texts. In
the most ancient discernible text by Xenophon, however, Cyrus got ‘possessed’
(enthusiastic, greatly delighted) during a hunting quest. After sitting
idle for some time, ‘he saw a boar rushing straight toward him, he rode to meet
him and aiming well he struck the boar between the eyes and brought him down’[4]
The prefix ἐν- (en-) of ἐνθουσιασμός
(enthousiasmos) means in, into, e.g., to be engaged in
philosophy. The primary stem, θου, (thou; English thu)
starts the words implying energetic behavior like θουραῖος (thouraios;
violent, lustful); θούρης (thourēs; male), θουράω (thouraō;
to rush, leap upon), θοῦρος (thouros;
rushing, impetuous, furious), θοῦρις (thouris; with
which one rushes to the fight). In all these words, thou, followed by R
(for energy; see section Leo – Reo),
becomes thour. The necked stem θοῦ (thou) is a second aorist imperative
form of τίθημι (tithēmi), meaning to set, put, like PIE *dhe-
(to set, put). Thou may, therefore, have derived directly from PIE *dhe-,
though without acquiring religious connotations as in *dhēs-, *dhes-,[5]
or *dhh1s (gift). I do not see any semantic
relation between thou, from enthousiasmos and Greek Theo-
or Slavic Fedora. But the English furious
(impetuous, unrestrained, enraged, livid, passionate) and all its European
cognates may well have derived from thouros (rushing,
impetuous, furious) by some Θ>Ф transliteration like that of Theodora
> Feodora. The cognate verb θρῴσκω (thrōiskō) means
to leap, spring, toss.
The Θ>F mutation may have occurred
during the transfer of Greek words to Latin via Oscan in Southern Italy. The
Oscan alphabet was based on Archaic Greek alphabets as attested in inscriptions
dating back to the 5th century BC
A different attested mechanism could
suggest a Greek origin of Latin fest in festus (of
or belonging to the holidays, solemn, joyful, merry, gay, joyous, everything
relating to a banquet) and its derivatives: feast, -fest, festal,
festival, festive, festoon, fete, fiesta,
etc. The initial F of these words would be an Archaic Greek Digamma (Ϝ, ϝ)
pronounced like /f/, /v/, or /w/, depending on what followed. In Ionian and Attic
dialects, this letter lost much of its phonetic value by the 8th century BC and was omitted from the Classical Greek alphabet. Other dialects,
notably Doric and Western Greek from which most Latin loans derive, retained
Digamma in inscriptions till the 4th century BC, late enough to be
transferred to the developing Italic cultures, e.g., Oscan (5th-1st centuries BC). In the Tsakonian dialect of Central and East Peloponnese,
remnants of this ancient sound can still be heard in some words today, pronounced
as [v]. Digamma gave the Latin F and f. It is also considered to be the source
of the Greek Stigma
(ς), today the digraph St or the terminal S, perhaps
also the aspirate diacritic[7]
(‘; spiritus asper, hard breathing), at least in some cases. The typical
example is that of Archaic Greek ϝοῖνος (wine) becoming οἶνος (oinos) in
Classical Greek, vinum in Latin, vino
in Italian, and wine in English (see section The Phoenicians).
The Latin stem fest could,
therefore, have derived from an Archaic, or Western Greek *ϝεστ giving the
Classical ἑστίασις (‘estiasis), feasting, banqueting,
entertainment, public dinner given by a citizen to his fellow-citizens, ἑστιάω
(‘estiaō), to receive at one's hearth or in one's house, entertain,
feast, ἑστιατορία (‘estiatoria), allowance of food, feast,
ἑστία (‘estia), hearth, fire-place, pan of coals, brazier,
sacrificial hearth, or Ἑστία (‘Estia), the Latin deity Vesta.
The latter case supports the hypothesis of an Archaic initial Digamma, Ϝestia,
converted into an aspirate diacritic in Attic Greek ‘Estia
and into a V in Latin Vesta. More ‘secular’ words would have crossed the
Adriatic earlier and would retain their archaic ϝ as /f/ in Southern
Italy before passing to Latin.
One of the current PIE theory's problems is explaining how Latin, deriving directly from PIE and bypassing
Greek in space and time, developed its alphabet and literature only in territories
where Archaic Greek alphabets preexisted for several centuries. It sounds like
Modern Italian and sister Romance languages flew express from the Pontic-Caspian
steppe kurgans and landed all by chance on ex-Roman territories without
visiting ancient Rome or any other place in Europe. Language can spread without
population migration. We do not need to assume invasions and population
movements to explain linguistic diffusion in space and evolution in time. The
alternative hypothesis is that Latin was the next step in evolving Old
Italic languages already using Greek alphabets and words. With this hypothesis
in mind and having undermined the assumption of common Aryan origin of fedora,
enthusiasm, fair, ferial, festival, and fiesta
directly from an unattested PIE *dhh1s (for
religious concepts), we may, now, consider profane, profanus, pro
fano, and fanum, fanatic, epiphany, and tiffany,
even fan, as old Greek words unrelated to god or any religious concepts.
The Homeric particle περ (per) is
used independently for whatever quantity, of matter, space, or time. It also
forms small words like: πέρα (pera), beyond, further, longer
(of time), more than, beyond, exceeding (of matter and things), above, higher
than (of space); πέρας (peras), end, limit, boundary, the perfection
of a thing, final decision, or other extremities; περάω (peraō),
to drive right through, pass right across or through space, traverse, pass a
barrier or boundary, accomplish, complete, go beyond, transgress, penetrate,
pierce; the preposition and prefix περί (peri), about,
around, roundabout, all-round, before, above, beyond; and starts more than 1600
other Ancient Greek words.
There is absolutely no reason to believe
that the alleged PIE *per- (1), forward, was phonetically converted to pro-
at any time in history because both per- and pro- coexisted in
masses since the dawn of attested languages throughout Europe. It would be like
claiming that Chimpanzees derived from humans instead of primates having a
common ancestor. If there is a common ancestor of per- and pro-,
this would be a single letter or two. In my opinion, there were four semantic
units (graphemes; p, r, e, and o) that were de novo
rearranged to produce independent signifiers (Fig. 1).
Figure
1. Semantics of per, pre, and pro. The semantic
units P, for mouth, curve, O for round, circle, R for top, head, center, and E
for opening, angle, vision field, are recombined to produce the notions of proximity
(pro, and pre) and beyond a boundary (per). Pro
denotes all the round area (O) delimited by a boundary (P) around a center,
i.e., the human top (R), the head including the eyes. Pre (compare French près, near, close) denotes an instance of pro seen at a time, the area near the eyes (R) and before a boundary (P),
the narrow side of ß (E).
In pro and pre, the boundary and the eyes are brought close
together (PR). Per denotes the area beyond the boundary as this is
defined by the widening angular ß (E).
The vertical line of the grapheme E represents a boundary, and E represents the
broad side of ß, the opening part of the vision
field beyond that boundary. In per, R is separated from P to emphasize
the distance between the vision center (R) and the signified object placed
beyond the vision limit (P). Of course, the graphemes are the closest available
stylized letters, and their symbolic values are not a physical human head (R), a
circular room (O), etc., but the underlying abstract mathematical concepts
applicable to any situation. This is what makes the stems so successful and
popular. Also, consider the English arrangements of pore (PORE) and rope
(ROPE).
The Homeric particle πρό (pro) means
before, forth, in front of, further on the road, i.e., forwards, onward. As a
prefix, it forms more than 4500 Ancient Greek words lending them its sememes of prematurity,
preference, priority, or proximity. Pro (before) is an
antonym of per (beyond). Thus, the word προφανής (prophanēs)
and its neuter form προφανές (prophanes), mean foreseen,
seen clearly or plainly, conspicuous, plain, clear, metaphorically famous, well
known, renowned. These words date at least since Bacchylides (circa 518 – circa 451 BC).
In his 3rd Ode, For Hieron of Syracuse Chariot-Race at Olympia
(468 BC), Bacchylides writes ‘ὁ γὰρ προφανὴς θνατοῖσιν ἔχθιστος φόνων’[8],
brilliantly rendered as ‘for death is most hateful to mortals when it is right
before their eyes’[9].
Following traditional etymology for the
next stem of prophanes (foreseen, etc.), phan comes
from the verb φαίνω (phainō), which provides the stem in many grammatical
instances. Phainō means to bring to light, cause to appear, in the physical
sense, uncover, make it clear to the ear (of sound), show forth, rise (of wind),
gleam (of daybreak), display, inform, denounce, make known, reveal, disclose, give
information, proclaim, give light, shine, come to light, appear, be seen, come
into being, come about, be set forth, look like; in philosophy, to appear to
the senses, appearing in sense experience; Hence we have phenomenon, to be
observed, mentally apparent, what is to be seen, shown, mentally manifest.
These are certainly all antonyms of god. God is neither seen nor heard nor
otherwise experienced by anybody but fanatics. The image seen needs not to be physical; it can be a mental perception or conception. Thus, phainō
also refers to opinion, specious or fallacious, and to imagination or fantasy
(compare φαντασία; phantasia; imagination, fantasy),
all still very human. Yet, in Latin fanum and its cognate profanus
(also prophanus), the stem fan has always been interpreted
as referring to god’s domains, i.e., temples and religious activities, as if it
had nothing to do with the Greek phan from phainō
but with god’s manifestations.
Among 55 Ancient Greek derivatives
of phan, all related to sensing, light, and vision, in particular, this
stem has given φανή (phanē), torch, φάναξ (phanax),
lantern, φανός (phanos), literally the thing that (-os)
‘phan-s’ – whatever this means – and its diminutive φανίον (phanion),
eye-salve. Used as an adjective or nominalized adjective, phanos
means light, bright, brightness, washed clean, joyous, conspicuous. As a noun, it means torch, like phanē. The adverb phanōs
means clearly, and prophanōs, obviously, evidently, i.e., happening clearly in front of one’s eyes in a perfectly understandable way.
The English suffix -ic, from Middle
English -ik, Old French -ique, Latin -icus, PIE *-kos,
or Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikos), on noun stems carried the meaning
characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to. On adjectival stems, it
acted emphatically. The suffix -ate, from the Latin perfect passive
participle suffixes -ātus, -āta, and -ātum, through Middle
English -at, means having, characterized by, or resembling the specified
thing. Together, the two suffixes form -atic meaning emphatically like
the specified thing. When the compound suffix is attached to fan, it
gives fanatic, i.e., emphatically resembling or pertaining
to a fan. But, do not be surprised!
In English, a fan is used
necked for a device that creates an air current, one that raises a perceptible
wind, one that phan-s (from Greek phainō, as
above). The current etymology of fan is from Old English fann, a
basket or shovel for winnowing grain by tossing it in the air (making the grain
visible), from Latin vannus (note the V/F mutation), perhaps related to ventus,
wind, or from PIE root *wet- (1), to blow, to inspire, spiritually
arouse (compare rising wind sememe of phainō above; the air is a spirit).
Old English did not have a letter V, hence the change in the initial consonant[10].
But fan is also a vulgar spelling of phan (from phan-os),
the torch or the torch's light. A Latin *phanaticus or English *phanatic
would have meant someone emphatically resembling the torch or its light, the
illuminated or illuminating. In French, and probably in earlier traditions, the
analog illuminé (of a person) means mystic, one who believes himself
inspired by God. To be illuminé is a good thing in one’s own opinion
but a bad thing from everybody else’s perspective. Because fanatism is
generally regarded as a vice rather than a virtue, the spelling of *phanatic
had to be downgraded into fanatic. A phenomenon,
also from phainō, retains the ph-spelling because it has very sophisticated
semantics, e.g., a fact or event considered very unusual, curious, or
astonishing by those who witness it.
With the same fate as fanatic,
prophanus became profanus and came to us as profane because it was thought to mean in front of (pro-) the Temple (fanum
> -fanus) with the worst connotations. In Old Latin, a
fanum was not a noble temple, shrine, sanctuary, or place dedicated to a
deity anyway. It came to mean a noble building because noble
buildings were illuminated with torches (fanus > fanum) to be seen even at night. Any noble building could be illuminated (fanum),
be it a pagan temple, a bank, a victory arch, a public marketplace, a luxury
shop, a brothel, or the house of the rich. We still illuminate our landmark
buildings at night, but also our streets. For the fanatics, however,
only a temple counts as fanum. Like the English fan that gives an
artificial air draft, fanus was a modest torch (Greek phanos)
giving artificial light. Profanus was the immediate vicinity of a
torch, the round illuminated area (fanum) with the torch
in its center, and everything that could be clearly seen right in front of (pro-) the torch (-fanus).
Thus, the profane is what is clearly seen right in front of the torch,
the evidence, of which only a tiny hyponym is the exterior area of a religious
temple around the point where a torch is fixed
In Christian tradition, illuminated
buildings were symbols of vain wealth and evil works. Moreover, the visible,
the obvious, the evident, the sensible, the material, what is amenable to
experimentation, in a word, the προφανές (prophanes;
profane) is only ephemeral and not necessary. What is essential is the spirit,
the invisible – in a sense, obscure – lying beyond the light of the torch
either inside us or in the absolute darkness in front of us (after death), incomprehensible but eternal, the thing that lives beyond death, even if that
is unperceivable by sense and experience.
For the above hypothesis to stand any
chance of acceptance, the meaning of a torchlight must fit better than that of
a temple in ancient contexts where fanum is found. Its
oldest known occurrence is not in Latin but in Oscan. The second longest and
most important Oscan inscription is the Cippus Abellanus and dates
around the end of the 3rd century BC (the longest is a later legal
text referred to as Tabula Bantina). It is a bilingual, Latin/Oscan
inscription about an agreement marking the limits between the cities of Abella
and Nola at the height of a temple of Heracles.
…if anyone wants to build on the land within the boundaries where the temple of Hercules [Herculis fanum] stands in the middle, may the senate allow him to build outside of the walls that encircle the temple … But beyond the wall that encircles the temple, in that territory, neither the Abellans nor the Nolans may build anything. … But the road that is between … Abella and Nola is a communal road. The boundaries stand in the middle of this road.[11]
The beginning of the Cippus Abellanus text
is awkward. At first glance, we understand that there is no man’s land
between the boundaries that surround the temple and the temple itself. Nobody
can build there. But the essence of the text, as explained by the end, is not
to protect the temple's courtyard. The boundary between communities cannot be a single point (building); it must be a line. Indeed, by
the end of the text, we understand a communal road running between
the towns, the forbidden zone is the road, and the boundaries stand in the
middle of this road. Hercules's temple(s), defining the boundaries, stood in
the middle of the road. It is difficult to imagine how a temple could stand in
the middle of a road unless fanum (temple) meant torch, and
Heracles, wooden (see section Hera
and Heracles – the house and the wood). The wooden torch-posts illuminating
the road delimited the territories, and nobody could build on the road itself but on either side of its edging.
Another early occurrence of fanum is
in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History
ideoque etiam publice febris fanum in palatio dicatum est, orbonae ad aedem larum, ara et malae fortunae esquiliis[12]
This was translated as:
It was from this cause that a temple was dedicated to Fever, at the public expense, on the Palatine Hill, and to Orbona, near the Temple of the Lares, and that an altar was elected to Good Fortune on the Esquiline[13]
We are roughly told by this translation
that early Romans (foolish enough) spent money to build a temple and hired
priests to worship a god called Fever. And another temple with other priests,
to worship another god called Household (Lares)! Because, as Pliny appears to
explain, Romans had a god for everything, and each person worshiped several
gods – so, there were more gods than humans. This sounds odd to me. I just
cannot believe that the Romans of a post-Hellenistic era were so crazy. I,
therefore, replaced the translation fanum = temple with fanum =
torch, lighting. I also removed the sememe of a spiritual god from Lares (larum;
a hearth, dwelling, home, tutelar domestic deities, protectors of the house and
household), leaving them to mean the human responsibility of the house and household
protection. Then, I compiled all the probable alternative translations for all
the other words of the quoted passage from LSJ into Table 1.
Reading the sememes vertically from the
second column of this table, we realize that Pliny did not speak about any gods
but about public insurance policies, i.e., (i) against fire caused by falling
torch posts or household fires (hearth, stoves, lamps, etc.), (ii) support for
parents that lost their children, or (iii) any other calamities and accidental
death. Pliny’s text should rather read: … besides, for this reason of
uneasiness (febris) about torch-poles blown down by the wind (fanum
in palatio), parents losing their children by household fires (orbonae ad aedem larum ara), and other deadly
misfortunes (et malae fortunae esquiliis), that there is a dedicated
public fund (publice dicatum est). The Romans were not foolishly devout
but as wise as we are. Public safety, social security, private
insurance, and the corresponding taxes and fees were part of the goods and
services that the Greco-Romans called gods.
Table
1. The semantics of Pliny's passage about 'febris fanum'. The
Latin terms are hyperlinked to LSJ.
|
for that
reason, on that account, therefore |
|
|
also, furthermore, also, likewise, besides |
|
|
public |
|
|
a source of uneasiness, torment |
|
|
torch (not Temple) |
|
|
on, about, respecting; towards, against; for, as; in, to; into |
|
|
a driving in of pales or stakes > (of rain or snow) falling
and being blown by the wind with great force (in a specified direction) |
|
|
To give up, set apart (save), appropriate a thing to anyone
(dedicate, consecrate, devote) |
|
|
to be, live, be found, |
|
|
the tutelary (goddess) of parents bereft of their children |
|
|
near to, by, at, close by, about, with regard to, in respect of,
in relation to, as to, to, in |
|
|
house, habitation, |
|
|
household protection (human
responsibilities, not gods) |
|
|
hearth and home, altars and fires, a structure for sacrifice
> house fire |
|
|
and in fact, and indeed, and truly, and so, as well as |
|
|
anything bad, evil, mischief, misfortune, calamity, hurt,
harm, severity, injury |
|
|
chance, hap, luck, fate, fortune |
|
|
campus, level, in earlier times low
people were buried there |
References
Buck, Carl Darling. 1904. A Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian, with a Collection of Inscriptions and a Glossary. Boston, MA: Ginn & Co.
Campbell, Mike. 2021. “Fedora.” Behind the Name. Victoria, BC, Canada: behindthename.com. 2021.
Pliny. 1855. The Natural History. Edited and translated by John Bostock and H T Riley. London: Taylor and Francis.
Vaan, Michiel de. 2008. “Fanum.” In Etymological Dictionary Of Latin and the Other Italic Languages, 7:201. Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series. Leiden: Brill.
Xenophon. 1914. Cyropaedia. Edited and translated by Walter Miller. Xenophon in Seven Volumes. Vol. 5. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
[1] The theosphere is above, below, and inside the stratosphere.
It is the god’s (theo-) domain. Like god, no one can see it or
experience it by any physical means, but it does exist! I didn’t invent theosphere;
like theo-, it derives from PIE root *dhes-, forming words for
religious concepts!
[2] Profane in the Wiktionary
and in the OED;
accessed 29 May 2021.
[5] enthusiasm
in OED; accessed 30 May 2021.
[7] The hypothesis in several instances herein is that the
hard-breathing diacritic indicates aspiration, snoring, effort, hardship,
sadness, a missing sememe, the sememe of missing, and the such.
[8] Bacchyl.
Ep. 3.51 original.
[9] Bacchyl.
Ep. 3.51 translated by Diane Arnson Svarlien.
[11] Adapted from the Oscan
language in the English Wikipedia; accessed 3 June 2021.
[12] Plin.
Nat. 2.5 in Latin.
[13] Plin.
Nat. 2.5 in translation.