Date:         Sun, 6 Sep 2009 10:57:28 -0700
Reply-To:     Rocket J Squirrel <camping.elliott@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Rocket J Squirrel <camping.elliott@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Sin
In-Reply-To:  <20090906164831.700D6116F55@hamburg.alientech.net>
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Well . . . "sin" seems to go deeper than that. I've read a lot about the
etymology of this word, as it is currently used. Rather than try to bang
back through the stuff I looked at years ago, someone else has already
written it up:

Consider, for example, the etymology of the word “sin”.  It comes from the
Old English “synn”, which has the meaning of a crime and is associated
with doing evil. The Old Norse is “synd”, and the German Sünde. But its
inclusion in the Bible is as a translation from the Latin “peccatum,”
which doesn’t mean the same thing at all; its meaning is more in the sense
of a religious error. In the original Greek version of the New Testament,
the word is “hamartia,” which literally means to miss the target – a word
normally associated with archery. In biblical Hebrew, the generic word for
sin is het. It means to err, to miss the mark.

(http://www.wordsyoudontknow.com/2009/05/10-words-whose-etymology-you-dont-know/
-- I'm not quoting that as an authority, the same information is available
  from more scholarly sources. Rather, I am quoting that passage because
it's concise, something I don't have enough time to be.)

--
Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
74 Utility Trailer. Ladybug Trailer, Inc., San Juan Capistrano
Bend, OR
KG6RCR



On 9/6/2009 9:40 AM Mike S wrote:

> At 10:31 AM 9/6/2009, David Beierl wrote...
>> Incidentally, the word "sin" literally means missing the
>> target you shot at.
>
> Where do you get that? The OED says "ORIGIN Old English, probably
> related to Latin sons 'guilty'." I would have guessed its roots to be
> in "sinister," which literally means "left," but has other meaning
> related to "sin."
>
> Is "frak" OK?
>