virgins, virus, and virtue

[Luthor Rex]

I know there are some real nerds on here (I mean that in a good way)...

I was thinking about how the word "virtue" means "manliness" and I was looking at http://www.etymonline.com/ because I was wondering if "vir" means "man" then where the hell did "virus" come from.

Virus is decribed as something poisonus, but the root "vir" is the "man" root. So would a better understaning of "virus" be something like this:

Virus: vir (man) us (to melt away), so "virus" would be "to melt away man" or something that destroys man. But this is a physical destruction and not spritiual, I believe.

Oh, but that word "virgin" is really going to make my head explode.

Virgin: vir (man) gin - this second part has got me stumped. Is this "gine" meaning "to beget" or is this "from". So maybe vrigin would really mean "to beget man" or "from man"?

Is the "gin" in virgin the same as the "gin" in origin??

Wow, I'm bored...

:moon:

 

[Luthor Rex]

Ok I found the "virgin" thing...

But it is hard to overlook the interesting etymological coincidence between virtue and virgin. Could there be some aboriginal unity it disguises? Indeed, vir for man is taken from an even earlier proto-Latin root (probably Hindo-Sanskrit or Greek) for stick, twig, or rod and, by metaphorical association, phallus. Which was tenor (literal) and which vehicle (figurative) is lost in time. We can imagine that humans were probably invited by language to name the phallus before they named the stick -- the former being closer to home, as it were, so it might actually have been the stick to which the metaphor stuck, and not the other way around. In any case, virgins are ignorant (gn = knowing) of the vir. (The habit of naming women after men seems deeply ingrained. In Hebrew, man is "eish" and woman is "eisha." )

http://home.nycap.rr.com/porush/DaveWeb/HTML FIles/Etymology of virtual.htm

 

[Luthor Rex]

Ok I need to stop the obsessing... but...

I would have never thought "rapid" and "rape" share the same root...

rapid
1634, from L. rapidus "hasty, snatching," from rapere "hurry away, carry off, seize, plunder," from PIE base *rep- "to snatch" (cf. Gk. ereptomai "devour," harpazein "snatch away"). Rapids is 1765, from Fr. rapides, applied by Fr. voyagers to North American rivers. Rapid-transit first attested 1873; rapid eye movement is from 1916.

rape (v.)
c.1386, "seize prey, take by force," from Anglo-Fr. raper, O.Fr. raper "to seize, abduct," a legal term, from L. rapere "seize, carry off by force, abduct" (see rapid). L. rapere was used for "sexual violation," but only very rarely; the usual L. word being stuprum, lit. "disgrace." Sense of "sexual violation or ravishing of a woman" first recorded in Eng. as a noun, 1481 (the noun sense of "taking anything -- including a woman -- away by force" is from c.1400). The verb in this sense is from 1577. Rapist is from 1883.

 

[Zazenth]

Suprising I like it.