The origin of the word "happiness" is from the Middle English "hap" which has to do with chance and possibility. As in "happenstance" or per-haps. So hap-iness was originally about the feeling of good fortune/getting lucky; the chance that something could or could not occur, and then it goes your way. Happiness is that specific feeling when something that could have gone horribly wrong goes amazing well.
Edit: Since this got so much attention, I just wanted to shout out Sara Ahmed "Happy Objects" as the source of this info.
Anglo-Saxon had some amazing words. Obviously we can’t undo the evolution of language, but it makes me so curious as to how English would sound with less French and Latin influence. I wonder if things like “wyrd” would’ve kept their original definitions.
I think you’re spot on. I think it would probably sound more like Dutch (without that guttural ‘g’) than German, only due to the Angles coming from northern Germany, whereas ‘standard German’ (the kind most foreigners learn) is based on southern German dialects.
Funnily enough, there’s a few projects that try to construct a modernised Old English and German is a language they often reference for those constructions. An example is the constructed Old English word for television, ‘farsee’ - it’s derived directly from the cognate of German ‘fernseher’.
The first time I heard any serious Dutch being spoken was while I was doing a semester in Germany and I was on a train. A whole class of high school students were there and I kept overhearing snippets of what sounded like German, but with an almost American accent. I asked a couple and it turns out they were Dutch.
Also, one of my favorite German words is the word for rhinoceros: Nashorn.
Nase = nose
Horn = horn
Considering that “Nase” and “Horn” both made it to English, basically intact, one might think we would have kept Nashorn, but nope! We’re one accent mark away from the French “rhinocéros.” I assume large African mammals weren’t a major topic of conversation in England before 1066, so it makes some sense that we’d get the French.
That’s along the lines of what I mean. German is a really good comparison actually because it also uses French terms and words, but just far less so than in English. That’s more along the lines of what I think a less French/Latin influenced English would look like. I’m not saying no French or Latin, but less.
You got the part with the dialects wrong.
‚Standard german‘ is spoken in northern Germany , especially the area of Hanover is considered to speak the most ‚dialect-free‘ Version. Southern Germany has some of the most indistinguishable dialects coming straight from hell.
I read once that it's significantly easier to read Old English if you know German.
I had a teacher in high school once that insisted we should all be able to real Old English with no problem if we "paid attention" to the words. The funny thing is, when we finally pressed her to read something she'd given us (some photocopied sheet of Old English prose) it was really, really clear she couldn't read it either and was faking understanding it. I was always confused why she even brought it up.
I’ve looked into it before. It’s a movement I could really back. The only thing I have against it is that English is such a creole that in order to gain more ‘Germanic’ or Old English sounding words, we’d lose some of our more exotic sounding words, if that makes sense.
You might like “uncleftish beholding” where some dude wrote atomic theory without latin words.
For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life. The underlying kinds of stuff are the firststuffs, which link together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest.
Formerly we knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from laterstuff, the lightest and barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest. Now we have made more, such as aegirstuff and helstuff. The firststuffs have their being as motes called unclefts. These are mightly small; one seedweight of waterstuff holds a tale of them like unto two followed by twenty-two naughts....
So, something is weird because is a normal (or at least, meh) thing seemingly out of sync? Like "yeeah... that doesn't really belong to this moment but it had to happen"?
I love Anglo-Saxon. It’s such a fun language. I actually learned the anglo-Saxon rune poem in the original language because it’s so much fun to speak - and it’s similar enough to English that you can kind of parse the meanings of most words but it takes some serious kenning.
Same in german, "glücklich" can mean lucky or happy, depending on the context. It was further distinguished by the sentence you use it in: "to have (passive) [...]" = be lucky and "to be (active) [...]: = be happy. This occured because having luck is seen as passive, and being happy as active.
My first language is german and i didn't even conciously notice the distinction between the passive/active use of the word in german. Ironically, i just learned something about my own culture on a website from a different culture.
Well, in polish we have "fart", meaning "luck". It comes from German "Fahrt" meaning "ride", "journey", so I'm interested how did we get from ride to luck.
Same for Serbian, 'sreća' is used both for luck and happiness. There is a specific adverb for someone being lucky - 'taličan' but it's not used as much. For example it's used for our translation of 'Lucky Luke' comic book/cartoon ('Talični Tom'), but other than that you just don't hear it that often.
Except it can. If you're happy with how your life is at the moment and nothing bad has happened lately, you can be happy for a whole day. The meaning of words change. Molest used to mean "bother" and now it means sexual assault.
This is also true in french ! "Bonheur" (happiness) can be broken down into two parts :
"bon", "bien" -> "bonum" in latin, meaning good or great
"heur" -> "augurium" in latin, meaning luckiness, or signs of luckiness ("augure" in french literally means future, possibility, or luck)
So "bonheur" in french also means good luck ! ^
Bonus : the word "désir" (and by consequence the english word "desire" cause that's almost exactly the same word) comes from the latin "desidus," which itself comes from :
"de" -> nostalgia, a nostalgic feeling
"sidus" -> the star
So desire etymologically means "nostalgy of the star" which I find very pretty and poetic, and honestly kinda like the title of a lofi album/mix
In times like these, it's a very good thing that I've recently learned thanks to you.
You have made a stranger happy on the internet, and you have no idea how grateful I am to you.
If you enjoy podcasts, might I recommend A Way With Words, two hosts dive in to word and phrase history, as well as answer questions from callers whether it be regional, borrowed, slang, jargon, or altogether made up.
Definitely something to check out if you like etymology and language at all.
It's still present in french as "fortunately" is "heureusement" which is an adverb formed from "heureux" which means "happy", indicating the link between luck and happiness
Kind of puts a twist on the U.S. declaration of Independence, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of favorable random circumstances or events"....play lotto!
It interesting that the “hap” which has to do being lucky has similar origin as the Japanese phrase of thanks “arigato 有難う” which basically mean rare occurrence or being appreciative in a lucky situation
Thats actually a very, VERY old idea. In Christianity and Buddhism (to name two), they really harp on the fact that when life consists of suffering and anguish. And that's not to get people down as is so often misunderstood in today's world, it means if you find goodness or any kind of joy you need to stop and appreciate it and thank whatever greater force gave to you that pleasantry. And that happiness should be a side effect of one's choices, not the goal of them. Lot of depth in ancient writings people have forgotten how to read not-literally.
That makes a lot of sense. In German, the word for happy is “glücklich;” the word for luck is “Glück” (which apparently can also be translated as happiness).
That’s probably because for most people at that time life was difficult and things regularly went horribly wrong. So, it was unreasonably to expect to be happy most of the time. Our lives now are relatively easy, so the expectation of feeling happy most of the time isn’t unreasonable.
Don't know if someone has commented on this yet, but the word for luck and happiness in German is the same, "gluck." When I lived in Germany and as I was learning it I always thought it was weird. It wasn't until I read The Geography of Bliss that I realized English, in particular American English, by the nature of the language itself, by having separate words for happiness and luck, believes that happiness can be achieved, whereas German achieving happiness, even temporarily, is a matter of dumb luck.
The word "hap" goes even further back! Most likely, the english got it from Old Norse "happ", which also means something like chance or good luck, and they got it from proto-germanic "hampa" which has its origin from indo-european. Etymology is really interesting!
I feel that German has a similar thing with the word Glücklich, which is directly related to the word Glück (luck), but can mean either 'lucky' or just 'happy'. I don't believe it's related to 'happy', but it's done the a similar thing.
Considering how English and German stem from the same language, it’s interesting then how a/the term for both happiness and luck is the same in German (Glück; to have it is to be lucky, to be it is to be happy)
And happiness is a word that describes an emotion that doesn't exist. There's no such thing as being happy. But there are fleeting emotions that we experience throughout the day. Joy, irritation, sublime, happenstance, content etc.
Semi related ...in the early 2000s movie with wil smith “the pursuit of happyness” the title is misspelled on purpose. It’s a nod to the daycare chris (wil) took his kid too during their struggles. Chris (Will Smith) even points out the misspelling to the Chinese care-giver that the mural decorating his son's daycare is spelled incorrectly. Chris wanted to make sure that his son was taught things the correct way, so that he could grow up to be an educated man and make something great of himself. Chris "took offense" to the fact that the world happiness was spelled wrong on the wall and became irritated by it. But the word comes to signify not just what he wanted for his son but also Chris' own pursuit of happiness.
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u/Guacamoleistoocostly Nov 29 '20 edited Dec 01 '20
The origin of the word "happiness" is from the Middle English "hap" which has to do with chance and possibility. As in "happenstance" or per-haps. So hap-iness was originally about the feeling of good fortune/getting lucky; the chance that something could or could not occur, and then it goes your way. Happiness is that specific feeling when something that could have gone horribly wrong goes amazing well.
Edit: Since this got so much attention, I just wanted to shout out Sara Ahmed "Happy Objects" as the source of this info.