At 01:13 AM 4/17/2012, K Randolph wrote : > PTH to allure, entice, PTY gullible, gullibility. In other words, the verb refers to taking advantage of others gullibility. It has nothing to do with opening. . . . . . But in these cases, the meanings are so different that no etymological connection can be made.
I don't want to come off as being an argumentative know-it-all, especially because Biblical Hebrew is not my forte. However, the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT) has in its entry for PTH and PTY: "The basic verb idea is 'be open, wide, spacious." Moreover, I think we can deduce that the concept of gullibility --as well as the concepts of enticing, deceiving, and persuading -- that existed in PTH was indeed a melioration of the concept of openness that had theretofore lied inchoate a) in the mouth, b) the logogram that Hebrew scribes used to represent the mouth, c) the root peh that referred to the mouth, and d) many of peh's derivatives, if we recognize the following facts and forced deductions. First, Roget's Thesaurus lists 1) "susceptible" as a synonym for "gullible," and 2) "open" as a synonym for "susceptible." Hence "open" and "gullible" must also be considered synonyms. Second, Greek "anastomow" 'to open up' was derived from Gk "stoma" 'mouth' evidently to identify the relatively abstract notion of opening with the physical act of opening the mouth Third, "gullible" can be traced back through Middle English "golen" 'to swallow' and Middle English "gull" 'mouth' to Old French "goule", opening', and further back to Latin "gula" 'throat', evidently because "gullible" was coined to figuratively identify gullibility as the tendency to open the mouth and swallow anything anyone said. Hence, the development of PTH 'gullible' from "PEH" 'mouth' perfectly parallels the development of "gullible" from "gull" 'mouth, opening', and Greek "anastomow" 'open' from "stoma" 'mouth'. I think the development of PTY 'foolish, simple' from PTH can then be understood by recognizing that 1) Roget's lists "empty-headed" and "vacuous" as a synonyms for "foolish," and "simple," and 2) "vacuous" was derived from Latin "vacuum" 'empty, open'. We can thus go on to deduce that PTY was coined to identify people who were foolish and simple as people who were vacuous, empty and thus, open to being persuaded or deceived. This analysis therefore strongly suggests, if not clearly reveals, that PTCH and PTH are as cognate as they clearly reveal because PTCH was coined to associate creating a vacuous, open or empty condition with opening the mouth, and 2) PTH to refer to the corresponding psychological condition. I think we can then go even deeper into this linguistic gestalt by recognizing, as Isaac Fried did, that "The root PTX is apparently a variant of . . . PSG, PSX, PCX, P$X, P$Q, (PSQ), PTX with acts connoting 'spread'. OTOH, Isaac concluded that "PISEAX, as in 2S9:13 appears to mean 'spread-legged' where the spread is due to a limpness of the legs. However, I'd conclude , as the TWOT does in its entry for PSQ 'open wide', that the above-mentioned words were coined to identify spreading as opening up; for instance, in Eze 16:25 which the KJV translates PSQ and RGL as "opened thy feet." The relationship between the aforementioned words are far more complex and interesting than this, but I'm afraid I've already over-stepped the limits that regulars usually place on visitors. Bill _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
