Perhaps an unusual post for this blog, but I came across this quote on another blog and had to post it somewhere. It's by Lewis Thomas:
Love
From the Indo-European root leubh, containing the general sense of loving, desiring and caring all at once, the Germanic tongues evolved bileafa, meaning belief and faith, strong terms indeed and surely the underpinnings of genuine love. It needed only a suffix to become Old English lufu, and then love. Latin used the same root for libere and libet, carrying signals of pleasure, goodwill, freedom and candor. Libido was a more carefully used variant, cautiously indicating strong desire with risks of caprice and immoderation, even lust, brushing against Cupid and cupidity. Sanskrit had lubhyati, he desires, Lithuanian still carries liaupse from the same root, a song of praise. Leubh survives in modern German Liebe, solid, enduring love.
The French je t’aime, irreplaceable, and all the variants of amour emerging from the Latinamo, as robust a source for passionate love as the language has devised, can only be tracked as far as the ancient Latin word amma, believed to be a childhood term at the outset. From amma we have the Latin and French words for love, and also amicus, a friend, a reminder not to lose sight of the old connection between love and friendship. Also two of the most agreeable English words in the language: amiable and amicable.
It is as though the language tried several paths into the meaning of love, then thought twice and corrected itself. Kwep and kwap turned out to be the wrong way to go, blind alleys leading to cupid and vapid. The other roots produced the real idea, the foundation of lasting love: trust, belief, reliance, freedom and desire all combined, something to grow up with, a string of lovely, lovable words.
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