Years of studying Latin in high school and a highly curious personality has made me into someone
who loves words.
Whenever I come across a term I’m unfamiliar with, I try breaking it down first and looking
at its pieces.
You’d be surprised by the fascinating stories that words begin to tell once you see their roots.
Once a month on Nature League we’ll look at the etymology, or origin and history, of
words related to nature.
To start us off, I’ll start with a personal favorite: the word “ecology”.
Yes, you probably already know this word, and you probably already know that the ending
“ology” means “the study of”.
But what I find interesting about the word “ecology” is the first part.
The beginning “eco” derives from the Greek word “oikos”, which actually means “house”.
So while a formal definition of ecology might be “the study of living and non-living things
sharing an environment”, ecology literally means “the study of the house”.
Isn’t that…kind of beautiful?
I mean, “living and non-living things” is /true/ in denotation, but the word “house”
has a totally different connotation, or feeling…and it’s one that I love.
To me, the word origin recognizes that when we study living and non-living things, we’re
actually studying a home...and in the case of certain systems, /our/ home.
And this is a fundamentally different thing philosophically.
It’s asking us to be a part of the thing instead of just studying it.
And that…is pretty sweet.