Webster is a liar.

How many trips to the Oxford English Dictionary have you taken into your lifetime? I like looking up words from time to time just to see how they have developed. Today, I spent some time on Free and Freedom. And BOY HOWDY did I get a re-education! Now, you show know first and foremost that I believe in the trans-formative nature of language. I am aware that language develops over time and meanings will morph - usually slowly - over centuries. The changing of meanings is a part of the making of our culture.

Today, I learned that woman and free are one and the same (in the history of linguistics) and that the idea that the word woman is derived from 'wife of a man' is not so very true (at the very least omits points of importance to its life as a word). Instead, the Sanskrit word for woman was priya "conjectured to be ‘one's own’" and has "the same Indo-European base as Sanskrit priya beloved, dear, (rare) friendly" And if you look specifically at the etymology of 'free' it comes from words that mean to delight, to woo, to please, to take care of, to LOVE.

I don't mean to make the same mistake that Webster did by leaving out most of the story. I strongly encourage you to look at the full history of these words. Instead, I want to give you a snapshot of what it made me think about.

Freedom has come to be understood on terms of extroverted qualities; of being apart from, not constricted, or independent from persons, places, and things - it seems quite the opposite of the very intimate and delicate nature of holding something close and caring for it - cherishing it and protecting it. When we describe someone or something as 'free' we tend to imply a disconnect. What if freedom or this ability to be "One's Own" or as the etymological development shows to be "of one's own blood" would require that we instead make efforts to hold ourselves and others closer and "take care of" each other. That freedom is not as my dear Janice sings "Nothing left to lose" but, instead is EVERYTHING to lose. What does that change?*

And if, as the dynamic Uppity Blues Women chant, W-O-M-A-N is NOT secondary in definition and linguistic origination to man but - is "one's own" and is to be 'beloved' and we are "to delight" in its own development of meaning over time as the sanskrit word priyayate would direct us to do - what does that change?*

*I believe this is a LONG conversation