Connections...

The words orator, adore and oracle have something in common- they stem from the same root word 'orare' meaning something akin to prayer. The words cremation and carbon too share the same root- 'ker' meaning heat. Week and vicarious. Language is full of such links- words that we would never imagine having a connection between them, do.

What strikes me as I look at these connections, again, is an overwhelming sense of history and invention. Here you have this word for this one thing and an umpteen number of related things around you unnamed. So you sit around a fire with your buddies or in the spur of the moment, you create, actually CREATE new words with what you have. Can you imagine being there, doing that? It's like the birth of language slowly unfolding around you. What strikes me again, is that to those people, it must have been an unremarkable thing- creating words. More of a necessity, really. Not weighed down by the millions of years that will follow that will takes these words they cobbled together and evolve them and twist them and be used so effectively everyday...

It's got all the beauty of a fractal, really- we are all offshoots and reflections of that ancient man who discovered in himself one of our most potent powers- creative thought.