SELF: The Wednesday Word #WednesdayWisdom
INTRO: Who are you? What makes you, you? When did you first come in to being? Where are you? How are you? Today we look at all of that!
WORD: Self (noun, adjective, and verb)
DEFINITION of self:
noun
- a person’s essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially considered as the object of introspection or reflexive action.
“our alienation from our true selves”
adjective
- (of a trimming or cover) of the same material and color as the rest of the item.
“a dress with self belt”
verb
- BOTANY
self-pollinate; self-fertilize.
“a variety that selfs itself loses lots of vigor in the progeny”
ETYMOLOGY of self:
Old English self, seolf, sylf “one’s own person, -self; own, same,” from Proto-Germanic *selbaz (source also of Old Norse sjalfr, Old Frisian self, Dutch zelf, Old High German selb, German selb, selbst, Gothic silba), Proto-Germanic *selbaz “self,” from PIE *sel-bho-, suffixed form of root *s(w)e-, pronoun of the third person and reflexive (referring back to the subject of a sentence), also used in forms denoting the speaker’s social group, “(we our-)selves” (see idiom).
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
[attributed to Alan Watts, who did often use the image in this sense in his talks, if not in these exact words]
Its use in compounds to form reflexive pronouns grew out of independent use in Old English. As a noun from early 14c.
Self: The Wednesday Word ACTION IDEAS:
We have some questions to answer. Remember how we started?
- Who are you?
- What makes you, you?
- When did you first come in to being?
- Where are you?
- How are you?
As you go in to answer these questions, I’d like to offer you the following quote from the poet Rumi,
You are not a drop in the ocean; you are the entire ocean in a drop.”