Ichneutymon #3: debt
- 3 minutes read - 536 wordsI don’t have a snappy quote for you here, although I did do searches for “debt quotes” and found a lot of nonsense. I thought of using the Tyrion Lannister quote, but didn’t want that vibe necessarily (still a good quote!). So today I wanted to dive into the etymology of the word “debt.” Undoubtedly this is a topic often on many people’s minds, considering all the credit card and student loan and other debt out there (student loans are a sore subject for me, ugh). But I think the word is interesting and worthy of further study.
The word comes directly from Latin debitum, which means literally “a thing which is owed.” This is a substantive (noun) use of the perfect passive participle of the Latin verb debere, “to owe,” which is most often used with an infinitive to mean “ought”: e.g., domum ire debeo ut parentes meos visam, “I ought to go home to visit my parents.” But then, you may ask, what is the further etymology of debere, the verb?
If we break debere down further, we find that it’s another compound of habere (“to have”), just like dubitare, but this one is a little simpler: de-, “(down) from” + habere, “to have.” But de- here has the sense of “away from.” As a result, a debitum, something you owe, is something you have (or “keep”) away from someone else. L&S explains it nicely with a Cicero citation: qui pecuniam dissolvit, statim non habet id quod reddidit, qui autem debet, aes retinet alienum (Cicero, pro Plancio 28.68): “He who pays money immediately does not have what he paid back; however, he who owes (debet) retains a debt [aes … alienum].” Another word for “debt” is aes alienum, literally “someone else’s money” (alienus, -a, -um, “of another, another’s”). So a “debt” is something you “keep away” from someone you owe – usually for as long as one can! I just remember pulling up the dictionary entry for debere and finding that really fascinating. Like with dubitare, it gives an interesting glimpse into the thought process and logic behind these ideas.
Latin has a whole lot of technical terms for owing, paying (back), &c. solvere means “to loosen” (cf. dissolve, solution, &c.), but can also mean “to pay” (cf. “solvent” and “insolvent,” meaning one can and can’t pay their debts, respectively). reddere means “to pay back,” but literally means “to give back” (re(d)-, “back, again” + dare, “to give”). Greek has a number as well, but I don’t know them quite as well, and they (to the best of my knowledge) are not etymologically related: ὀφείλω (opheilo) means “to owe,” and has the same double meaning of “to owe” a literal debt, but also means “to be bound, obliged to” + infinitive. Greek ὀφείλημα (opheilema) means “debt” (“that which is owed”), very similar to debitum. The verb ἀπέχειν (apekhein), “to keep away from,” which is almost a literal translation of debere, does not, per LSJ, have the same sense as debere, however.
Anyways, I thought y’all would find this interesting. I’m grateful for any and all of you who read my random ramblings, and I ought to give thanks! As always, thanks for reading <3