Mixin’ it in the Fix

Okay – you want a little window into how my quirky little brain works?  Here’s what I do in my spare thinking:  I can’t remember what started this particular series of thoughts; I was making breakfast.  And for whatever reason, I started thinking about word components and how English words are built.  I was thinking of the prefix “ex.”  As in “no longer” or “against.”  WAIT!!  I remember.  The guy with the machine is back, and I had watched him for a moment while he was backfilling the foundation, and I thought, “He’s an excavator.”  Then I heard the word a little sideways and thought – wait – ex- cave- ator.  Like, a guy who carves out caves.  And then I wondered if I was anywhere near the accepted (as opposed to “true”) etymology.

The excavator.  Or excavater.  Or excavationist.  Actually, I don’t think there’s actually an accepted word for this.  Anyway – look close.  See that big wheel?  It’s suspended over the foundation ditch.  The machine is standing on its two little wheels and its spider legs.  How often do I feel JUST like this looks?

Then I thought about the word, “examine.”  But I couldn’t take it apart. Ex –a- min.  I still have to look all this up and see what the accepted scholarship is on this.  I dropped that for a second and revisited “antidisestablishmentarianism,” which a GREAT tool to use, teaching people about the way English words are cobbled together (like cobble stones – streets made out of a series of stones, all fit together).

I thought – “Yeah, but who would I teach?”  And then I thought about my Sunday School class, and figured I could use the way words are built as a metaphor for how our lives are built – all out of little units of meaning, an aggregate of pivotal events – many contradictory—that eventually coalesce into a personal operating system.  (Now, I’m thinking that ranking the units plays into this – so chronology may have something to do with it, but deliberate assignment of value probably plays more heavily).

But I digress (yes, yes, yes).

Then I went back to ex-amine, which I still can’t explain.  I kept thinking “a – min.”  And then another word popped into my head: amenable.  At first glance, I pared the “a” (which is a common enough prefix) and looked soley at the “men,” just like I was trying to do with “ex-a-mine.”

And then it hit me: the word isn’t “a- men – able.”  It’s “AMEN – able.” As in, “I can say ‘amen’ to that.”

How funny.  Am I right?  I should look.  But when you look at “atonement,” one of the most solemn and dignified words in any language, you learn that it’s a fairly modern construct that simply breaks down as “at – one – ment.”  That was its birth.  That’s how it came to be – a churchman explaining this particular concept with a cobbled together word.

And shoot – I’m amenable to that.

See?  See how weird I am?

(Looked up examine.  Looks like it comes from the root examen –(test or try) which sounds to me like ex (“against” or “outside” of or “formerly”) AMEN.  Meaning, you are not simply accepting something commonly understood as one thing – you are stepping out of the AMEN to take another look.  HA!!

(Looked up “amen” – From the Hebrew for TRUTH. From Semitic. root a-m-n “to be trustworthy, confirm, support.”

Is it any wonder that 1) my bacon always burns and 2) I never get anything done?