Throe Up
Throes are a hot topic these days. It's a curious old word, seldom heard anymore except in last throes, which is what the vice president said. But many people seem to be curious as to just what exactly the vice president meant in using it in reference to the Iraq "insurgency."
In its earliest form in Middle English, it could mean either "agony of death" or "pang of childbirth." Here's hoping Cheney meant the former.
Trying to walk the vice president back into line with what the military authorites know about the Iraq situation, some people have pointed out that throes, like the days of Genesis, have no certain time definition. So if a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, might not a throe, even a final one, take a dozen years?
What a tangled web. Thank our stars the battlefields are in the hands of the soldiers and their officers, not the politicians and their mouths. Or the media who play these bitter games with them.
So what's a throe, anyhow? Etymologically, it's not clear, but there are two words in Old English that look like it, and either one could be its daddy.
One is þrea, genitive þrawe (that first character is a "thorn" and is pronounced -th-), which meant "affliction, pang, evil, threat." It was related to the common Old English verb þrowian "to suffer," from a common Proto-Germanic root that also appears in German drohen "to threaten."
The other Anglo-Saxon word that could be related to throe is þrawan, meaning "to twist, turn, writhe." If this may or may not be the root of throe, it's certainly the root of throw. This word comes from a different root than þrea, and its representative in modern German is drehen "to turn, twist."
Þrawan didn't get a sense of "to project, propel" until Middle English. The usual Anglo-Saxon word for "to throw" was weorpan, which is related to warp. The sense evolution of throw may be via the notion of whirling a missile before throwing it, like a softball pitcher's wind-up.
In its earliest form in Middle English, it could mean either "agony of death" or "pang of childbirth." Here's hoping Cheney meant the former.
Trying to walk the vice president back into line with what the military authorites know about the Iraq situation, some people have pointed out that throes, like the days of Genesis, have no certain time definition. So if a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, might not a throe, even a final one, take a dozen years?
What a tangled web. Thank our stars the battlefields are in the hands of the soldiers and their officers, not the politicians and their mouths. Or the media who play these bitter games with them.
So what's a throe, anyhow? Etymologically, it's not clear, but there are two words in Old English that look like it, and either one could be its daddy.
One is þrea, genitive þrawe (that first character is a "thorn" and is pronounced -th-), which meant "affliction, pang, evil, threat." It was related to the common Old English verb þrowian "to suffer," from a common Proto-Germanic root that also appears in German drohen "to threaten."
The other Anglo-Saxon word that could be related to throe is þrawan, meaning "to twist, turn, writhe." If this may or may not be the root of throe, it's certainly the root of throw. This word comes from a different root than þrea, and its representative in modern German is drehen "to turn, twist."
Þrawan didn't get a sense of "to project, propel" until Middle English. The usual Anglo-Saxon word for "to throw" was weorpan, which is related to warp. The sense evolution of throw may be via the notion of whirling a missile before throwing it, like a softball pitcher's wind-up.
