bdcharles

Had a good stumble around the Google-Wikipedia-Youtube triumvirate yesterday. You know how it is; you search something of interest, it sparks off a byway of secondary thoughts, and before you know it, you're enmeshed in someone's conspiracy darkweb and a party to murder. I wish I could remember what it was, but somehow it landed me in the etymology of the word "thing".

And it turns out, a thing is actually a thing.

A "thing" is a meeting, a hustings (the ~tings suffix shares the root), a witenagemot (hey, maybe that's where "whatnot" comes from). It means the business, the affair, the matter, a folkmoot. It's an old Norse word. Did others know this? Why's this remained a secret for so long?

I just remembered how I got there. I was searching on Yggdrasil, the world tree of Norse mythology. Why? I just like the sound, and the idea, of it. I believe the gods had their things there. Me, I might just put a folkmoot into my book; it's far too evocative a word to pass over. Yes; a folkmoot, hidden amid the roots of an ancient and mythical tree. It's funny, how excited writers can get over the tiniest of matters.

So anyway, that concludes this brief thing of ours. Anyone else made any discoveries, that show how the most mundane things expressions, artefacts, any business really, can hide a wealth of riveting bumpf?