A Blissful Blessing

By Dušan Vukotić

I almost forgot to comment the two footnotes I

have marked in my last article (White Wedding).
First is the English word bliss (spiritual joy; OE.
bletsian, bledsian ; Serb. blaženstvo; from blag
'placid', blažen 'blissful, placid'; Russ.
блаженство), which appeared to be related
with bless, although I didn't find any serious
etymologist who would be ready to link these
two words explicitly. It is interesting to mention
that The Oxford Dictionary of English
Etymology says that bliss may be relate to blood
(!). Chambers (Etymological Dictionary of the
English Language, p. 42), for instance, related
bliss with OE bletsian 'consecrate' and Gothic blotan 'sacrifice, kill', while Skeat (Etymological
Dictionary, p. 52) was more specific, saying that the "original sense (of bless) may have been 'to
consecrate by blood' (also Kluge, "sprinkle with blood" - English Etymology, p. 20-21).

In his book, with an indicative title: A Dictionary of True Etymologies (p. 22), Adrian Room is
resolute: ""The derivation of the word is not from 'blessed' but from an Old English word related
to 'blithe'. ('Bless,' unexpectedly, is related to 'blood')". The authors of The Oxford Introduction
to Proto-Indo-European (p. 194), Mallory and Admas, introduced the PIE root *wolno/eha- (Lat.
volnus, Gr. οὐλή, Skr. vraṇa. Of course, a small umlaut "correction" and it is possible to
relate bledsian to sprinkle with blood' to blood and bleed (ses Lyle Campbell, Historical
Liguistics, p. 252), but the problem is that the same thing can be done with the word bliss.
Namely, bliss appeared to be unrelated to to bless, although it is
related to blithe

Now, let us compare English bless and bliss with Serbian blag
'mild', blagosloven 'blessed' and blažen 'blissful' (Vasmer, I, p.
171; Russ. блажен 'blissful, placid', благословение 'blessing,
benediction'). It seems obvious that Slavic languages have the
similar words for both bless and bliss. In Czech and Serbian, the
word blaženost could be translated as bless as well as bliss; and
that word is a derivative of blag (Cz. blaho 'bless, bliss'). Here
we could compare Slavic and Latin words for blessing. On the
other side are the Latin words, beatus ‗blessed happy‘, bonus
‗good‘ and benignus ‗kind, favorable, obliging‘ and all three of
them may be translated as blessed. Is it possible that these words, together with those mentioned
above (Slavic and Germanic), originated from the common basis? If so, what that basis would
be? Isidore de Seville explains: ―Beatus, blessed or happy, is as if bene ductus, well enriched,
namely from having what he wishes and enduring nothing he does not want‖ (Isidore of Seville's
Etymologies: translated by Priscilla Throop; p. x.16). Does it not mean the same as English bliss?
Isidore also depicted a vague difference among those words and, in addition, mentioned Latin
blandus ‗flatering, charming person‘. In Greek, the relation between bless and bliss is very close
to that in Slavic and Latin: ὄλβιος, ὄλβος ‗blest, happy‘, ὀλβία ‗bliss‘. Hence, it seems, the
question imposes itself: how it happened that only Germanic languages connected ‗blood‘ and
‗happiness'/bliss‘. Does it make sense at all?

From his own side, Fransis Volpey suggested three possible sources of the Latin word beo ‗make
happy, bless‘. First was the Greek word βίος ‗life‘, and alternative was βύω ‗to stuff, to fool‘ and
βέο ‗to go‘ βέομαι ‗Ishel live‘ (probably related to βαίνω ‗step, walk, βαίνειν , make to go‘). To
add a little more confusion, let us mention Czech blázen ‘fool‘ vs. blažený ‘blissful, beatific‘
(Serb. bulazniti ‗talk nonsense‘, blesa ‗fool‘). What about English fool and full; are these two
words related or not? Fool comes from Latin follis ‗a leather bag, bellows, purse, puffed-out
cheek‘, which is from its side related to flatus –us ‗blow, inflate‘ (cf. Serb. nabudžiti, budžiti
,bulge‘, buđelar ‗purse‘, bešika ‗bellows, bladder‘). Now, although it might look as some sort of
confabulation, it seems, wherever we look we can see the same ―progenitor‖ word, which
sounded close to that ―imaginary‖ basis — named earlier *belgh-ghno- (White Wedding).

Greek βαίνω appeared to be akin to Latin venio –ire ‗come, arrive‘, and its pro- prefixed form
πρρβαίνειν ‗come forward‘ seems to be the same kind word as Serbian probijanje ‗pushing
forward‘ (cf. Skr. prabādh, ‗drive, urge‘, Serb. probadati ‗to pierce, puncture‘. In reality, it
may be that all the above mention words originated from the one unique word-well-generator.
Like in the Bible: in the beginning was the word. Actually, beginning may be of a key
importance for the understanding of the process of the branching of words. How can we suppose
that, for instance, Serbian početak ‗beginning‘ may be related to English beginning, if we do not
start to analyze all possible semantic links between these two words. The true is that phonetic
laws could be of great help in certain cases, but, on the other hand, they might be a big obstacle
in the process of understanding of the evolution of human speech. There are many irregular
changes to take the sound laws as an undeniable ―measure of the truth‖.

One more example: what to say about possible kinship of the Serbian word polazak, polaženje
‗to start/to go off‘, moving forward‘ and Latin pulsus ‘im-pulse, beating, blow‘. Just when I
thought that Serbian polaz ‗setting off, departure‘ and the verb puknuti ‗blow up‘ were derived
from the same ―proto-word‖ as it happened to Latin pullsus (Serb. *bəl-gh-ghən- => puknuti
‗explode, blow up‘; English blow probably used the same *bəl-gh- ―basis‖, doesn‘t matter in
what sense, strike or inflate), the ―other‖ word, similar to pulsus, with the meaning of pulse
‗porridge‘ came to ―blow up‖ the ―prearranged celebration‖. Logically, when the thing
bulged/inflated to an extreme it had to explode/blow up (the simple law of physics; Latin ex-
plodo = Serb. is-paliti ‗to fire off‘). Latin puls might be related to Serbian pasulj ‗bean‘ (Gr.
φάσηλος), and Latin phaselus ‗boat, kanu‘ (in accordance to the bean-pod shape of the vessel).
Now, visiting Lithuanian dictionary we can find the word pasaulis, which means ‗world‘ (similar
in Serbian, vaseljena/vasiona ‗universe‘). What is happening here? We started with φάσηλος
‗bean,‘ phaselus ‗boat, vessel‘ (as we can see, vessel came from Lat. phaselus; Gr. φάσηλος),
and ended with pasaulis ‗world‘ and vaseljena ‗universe‘. Close to vaseljena is the Byzantine
emperor, Βασίλειος (Basileios; Serb. p.n. Vasilije). At this moment we are coming to the point
where all the above thinking proves or disproves itself. Is it not truth that vessel (boat) belongs to
the kind of transportation device?

Then, if vessel (form phaselus, which sounds very similar to Serb. vozilo ‗vehicle‘, Skr. vāhika)
is transportation device, could that word not be of the same origin as Latin vehiculum –i? In this
case things appeared to be self-evident: Latin vehiculum is a compound word consisting of the
words veho ‗convey', drive‘ and col- ‗something round, round-shaped‘ (like oculus ‗eye‘; in
Serbian too: vozi ‗drive‘ + kolo ‗wheel‘ (*vohi-həlo => vozi’lo, contraction; cf. Cz. vozidlo
‗vehicle‘). Nevertheless, although the above ―explanation‖ of the origin of vehicle sounds pretty
plausible, it is hard to say what pasulj ‗bean‘, vaseljena/vasiona ‗cosmos‘ and Βασίλειος ‗the
Byzantine emperor‘ have in common with the notion of driving. Maybe, it is just a coincidence,
a chance resemblance, vessel, vozilo, vehicle? Of coarse, it becomes clear that pasulj (Gr.
φάσηλος) has been named like that in accordance with its round or kidney-like form. Latin
vesica ‗bladder‘ is obviously the same word as Serbian bešika ‗bladder‘, and this Serbian word
may be a Romanian loanword (băşică; Petar Skok, Etimologijski rječnik Hrvatskoga ili
Srpskoga jezika, I, p. 141), but it doesn‘t change the fact that bešika and vesica (vesiculum;
băşică) acquired their names thanks to their round form. Actually, bešika (vesica) is derived
from the basic IE proto-form, which sounded closely to the ―root‖ *bəl-gh- (many times
mentioned here). The basic meaning of such a proto-form is lump or round formation (Serb. oblo
‗round‘ OSl. обьлъ, Lat. bulla ‗swelling‘, oval ‗egg-like‘, OE belgan ‗to swell – with anger‘,
bylg ‗bulge, bag‘, Eng. bulge; Gr. βῶλος ‗lump, clod of earth‘, Skr. bhūgola ‗earth, globe‘ –
probably a metathesis of *bulg-).

The other meanings of the above-mentioned ―root‖ are derived differently in different IE
languages. In Serbian, for instance, oblo ‗round‘ branched later into words like obliti ‗pour over,
suffuse‘, obilaziti ‗go arround, to visit‘, oblaziti ‗go around‘, obilaznica ‗detour‘, obilaženje
‗detouring‘, polaziti ‗start, to go off, depart‘. Similar process can be followed in English too:
from ball, visit to begin. Now, I hope, we can see the multitude of sound changes that hardly may
be traced down in a satisfactory manner (assimilation, dissimilation, metathesis, aphaeresis,
haplology, epenthesis, elision, umlaut, ablaut etc.), and, what seems to be the biggest problem,
there are a lot of unpredictable changes that can not be subjected to any regular rule. For
instance, we can only ―understand‖ the process of phonetic mutation, which split up the *bəl-gh-
basis to three different words with different but close meanings: one is the above-mentioned
palaz-ak ‗setting off‘, then it comes pogon ‗driving force‘, and finally – početak, počinjanje
‗beginning‘. The both words, English beginning and Serbian počinjanje ‗beginning‘ appeared to
have the same morphology, both have bə- prefixed form of the common '‖stem‖ *ghon-. This
*ghon-, as a bound morpheme (almost always) indicates a certain kind of movement/motion (cf.
Ger. beginnen ‗begin, start, commence‘, begegnen ‗meet, encounter‘, begehen ‗do, execute,
perform, do, commit‘, gehen ‗go, move, proceed‘, gegen ‗opposite, contra, against‘; gucken ‗see,
gaze, watch‘). In Serbian language, the same morpheme is turned to *čin- (počinjati ‘begin‘
(Russ. начинать, Cz. zahájit, začátek, začínat, Pol. zaczynać), počiniti ‗execute, do, commit‘
(Russ. учинить, Ita. iniziato ‗initiate‘; from Lat. initio ‗initiate‘ ab initio ‗from the beginning‘,
Russ. от начала), a clear-cut counterpart to German begehen (Serb. počiniti nedelo ‗to commit
the crime‘). All the above-mentioned words might be considered as cognates.

Latin pello pellere ‗beat, drive out, push, strike, drive away‘ and bello bellare bellavi, bellatus
‗fight, struggle‘ may be of great/crucial importance for the understanding how the IE vocabulary
was evolving. Pulsus ‗stroke, beat, pulse, impulse‘ seems to be close to Serbian bilo, bijenje
‗throbbing, pulse‘ (Russ. биение), as well as to Greek βάλλω/βαλέω ‗throw‘ (Russ. валить
‗hurl, throw‘; Serb. dial. obaliti ‗fall down, throw‘). There is almost no doubt that these words
(all seemingly derived form *bəl-gh-ghən- basis) are ―cousins‖ to other ―younger‖ words as
Serbian ubijanje ‗killing‘, boj, bitka ‗battle‘, bolan ‗ill, sick‘ (Russ. больной), bol ‗pain‘
(Russ.боль), ubadanje/bodenje ‗stabbing, piercing‘ (Russ. пробивать, пробить ‘gore, to hole‘),
paliti ‗burn, spark , burn, stoke a fire, ignite‘ (Cz. vypalovat; Russ. воспламенять), opaliti ‗fire
off‘ (Russ. выпалить). It can hardly be a coincidence that, in this case, Latin and Serbian have
the words with a similar phonetics: vulnus ‗wound, mental/emotional hurt‘ and bolan ‗painful‘,
flamma ‗blaze, flame‘ and plamen ‗flame, blaze‘, even bello bellare seems to be a cognate to
Serbian borenje ‗fighting, batlle‘ (obviousli from “bol-hre-ghne with the loss of the sound [l]).

Maybe I am not able to explain precisely (especially not in English) what I have in mind, but the
main point of my above meditation is my attempt to ―instigate‖ an unconventional approach to
the field of comparative linguistics. Namely, how it would be if we did take all the three (above-
mentioned) Valpy‘s ―alternatives‖ (life, to go, to fill full) as correct? Does it not make sense?
The Slavic word bogat ‗wealthy‘ (Cz. bohatý, Russ. богатый, OSl. богатъ) may be derived
from *bolgat"-; again, the ―solution‖ of this enigma may lie in the Latin words — opulentus
opulenta ‗wealthy‘ and abundus ‗copious‘ or in Greek πλούσιος ‗wealthy‘ (Lacon. πλούσιος);
all word related to English plenty (Latin plēnus ‗full‘, Slavic polno). In Serbian, blago has
meanings ‗be well‘, ‗treasure‘, ‗livestock‘ (Russ. для блага народа for the wellfare of the
people) and it indicates that the above assumption, that bogat came from *bolgat (one who
possess blago, treasure or livestock, all the same) is probably true. Vasmer (I, p. 182) connects
bogat to the Slavic noun bog ‗god‘ (OSl. богъ, Cz. bůh, Russ. бог, божество), but, according
the above analysis, these two words cannot be linked directly. Bog ‗god‘ probably acquired that
name thanks to his greatness, big (Serb, velik ‗big, bulk‘; Serb. veliki bog ‗god is great‘,
‗almighty god‘; Russ. Великий Бог; Cz. veliký). A special curiosity here: the English word big is
phonetically closer to the Slavic word bog, than Slavic velik ‗big‘. However, there is the Russian
word большой (bol''shoj) ‗big‘, which may
possibly explain a lot of things about the name of
the Slavic god (bog).

Slavic blagosloven ‗blessed‘ could be the same

word as Latin benedictus (from *belgne-dict-) and
both words have the same meaning. It also can
hardly be considered as a coincidence. Now we
can go back to Saint Isidore‘s words mentioned
above: beatus –a -um ‗blessed, blissful‘, bonus -
um, ‗good‘, benignus –a –um ‗kindly, mild,
affable‘ and try to figure out that all they might be
derived from the same and unique agglutinated
proto-word. The same proto-word was probably used by all IE languages. I would say that the
relation between bless and bliss was better understood in earlier times (see on the left what
Wedgwood rote in his etymological dictionary).

skolalukicevo-etymology