We're writing fictional obituaries for journalism class this week, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to investigate this rather unusual word.
The word 'obituary' originated during the 18th century. It grew out of a Latin phrase, which literally translated means 'to go down' or 'make an exit'. Hurray for euphemisms. Latin is such a gentle language :)
The original word was 'obire' was a combination of 'ob', meaning 'down' and 'ire', meaning 'to go.' Obire lead to obitus, the Latin word for death, and from that grew 'obituarius,' a Latin adjective meaning 'of death.' It's obviously only a short hop from there to the modern English use of obituary. A bit morbid, but still fascinating.
No comments:
Post a Comment