Hello all,
How are you feeling as we enter into spring? You can really feel it in the air down here in Brighton, and the new buds are blooming from the ground, sprinkling colour through the grass. It's quite beautiful, really. This is a time of such transition and growth—I think that energy carries through the air, palpably at times. Now, enough with the seasons, I have some exciting news…
Gilded Sins & Dark Desires, my anthology of gothic and queer poetry is officially out on Amazon in paperback and on Kindle! On one hand, exciting! On the other, scary as hell. There’s something really vulnerable and terrifying about releasing my poetry to the world, knowing that these words will become the words of anyone who reads them. In the Scarlet Cherie: Vampire Series, there are lots of subtle hints to my own life, thoughts, morals, and experiences, but they’re so interwoven with fantasy, I’m certain no one (not even friends and family) can be certain where the lines blur. That is not the case with this poetry book. A lot of the poems are raw, honest, and vulnerable.
That leads us to today’s blog… etymology. Now, before we get into it, I must ask myself, why on earth did I think this was a good subject choice for a blog? Yes, etymology is interesting, but it’s rarely blog-worthy, especially not the words I want to write about. Nonetheless, we’re here now, and I’m a stubborn bugger, so we’re going to stick with it. Luckily, today’s word desire has some cosmic and poetic history. How fitting.
My body's a grave Desecrate me with your deep desires Necromantic need
- Ayshen Irfan, Gilded Sins & Dark Desires
Anglo-French Evolution
Let’s start with the basics. Desire, as a verb, stems from the Latin desiderare, meaning “long for, wish for; demand, expect”. After the Norman invasion, and ultimate conquering, England began to take on many of the Anglo-French words spoken by the Normans, their term desirrer became desiren. In the 1300s, the word also took on a noun form.
Consider the Stars
But what does desiderare really mean? Some argue the etymological relationship between desire and consider (from Latin considerare). The prefix de means “down from”, but the sederare in both these words actually means “heavenly body, star, constellation". To understand this better we need to look further back at the Latin root of the word. Desiderare most likely evolved originally from de (“down from”) and sidus (“stars, constellations”), becoming de sidere (“from the stars”) and then the aforementioned desiderare. To desire, back then, might have meant to await what the stars will bring, to long for their celestial blessing even.
When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to mean very much, do they?
- Virginia Woolf
Now, not everyone agrees on this. Whilst I would love to say the etymology for a word that holds so much weight and power, can be beautiful or provocative or even sinister, stems from the heavens, I can’t not tell you the whole story. According to Merriam Webster, some linguists believe that sidus might have an older etymological origin meaning “mark, target, goal”. Consider, therefore, would mean con, or to “together with” sider “goal”, or “together with, or focusing on, the goal”. Desire, unfortunately, would mean to “miss the goal”. How very unromantic.
Gilded Sins and Dark Desires
And so we reach the end. I think there's something so beautiful and fascinating about the fact that we use words every day and very rarely know, or even think about, where they came from. Perhaps next time you consider your own desires, you'll spare a look at the stars. Or maybe you're more for the other explanation of the word. Either way, I hope you've learned something new today!
You might even decide to read Gilded Sins & Dark Desires and have a little think about where the words in it came from. I may be a bit biased, but I'd recommend giving it a read.
Until we meet again, friends.