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The word "understand" is fascinating. A surface parse of the word gives little insight into how the components are related to the concept associated with the word. In contrast, with words like "leftover", it's not hard to figure out the link between the pieces and the concept ("left" makes sense, in that some part of the whole was "left", and "over" because the part that was left is "over and above" the part that was used). But "understand" is harder. As it turns out, "under" is used in a sense that no longer applies its usage in "understand", with the concept of "among" or "inter". So "understand" means something like "standing in the midst of" the thing that is understood.

My question is, is there a general way to describe such a phenomenon, where words are made of components that no longer have the meaning that led to their usage as such a component? Does this phenomenon have a name, or associated body of study?

tchrist
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Scott Deerwester
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  • Does this answer your question? Logical meaning of the word "understand" – Robusto Jan 24 '20 at 21:23
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    @Robusto. Thanks for drawing our attention to this, but do you actually see an answer to this new question about a name for the general phenomenon there? I can’t. There is some mention of “metaphorical not logical” that may be relevant. – Orbital Aussie Jan 24 '20 at 22:40
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    You are talking about the etymology of the word. And every word in the English language is different. – Hot Licks Jan 24 '20 at 23:07
  • Are you looking for this possible duplicate? – tchrist Jan 24 '20 at 23:07
  • I am not aware of the sort of word you are looking for. You could, I suppose, coin your own ‘neologism’. Indeed the opposite of ‘ neologism’ might fit the bill: ‘palaeoligism’. It is not to be found in any dictionary I have checked. ‘palaeo’ does the old part and so could be used. Or ‘metalogism’ might suggest the ‘change’ of use you suggest. The change might be a little different. What if understanding started as acceptance of a superior’s instructions or claims and shifted gradually to acceptance of a proposition through ‘understanding’? – Tuffy Jan 25 '20 at 00:05
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    This would probably be a better question for [linguistics.se]. Drift of meaning is a common phenomenon. – Barmar Jan 25 '20 at 01:29

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Etymology is the name of the field of study for how words change their meanings over time.

All words are composed of at least one morpheme. A morpheme is the smallest part of a word that carries meaning. For example "smallest" has two morphemes: "small" and "-est", and "word" has only one morpheme: "word". Morphemes are atomic because they no longer carry their meanings if they are reduced any further.

Etymology tells us where words come from, it doesn't tell us what words mean today as words often change their meanings from what they meant in the past.

So for "understand" we have a word that has the morphemes "under-" and "stand". However, it doesn't mean "to stand under", it means "to comprehend". The meanings of both morphemes have drifted so much that we no longer understand (ha!) or recognise their ancient meanings, while the word as a whole has a meaning not hinted at by its constituent morphemes.

This is what etymology is for: to make sense where the history based on the present meaning is obscured.

CJ Dennis
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