Speculation

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 8/13/02 10:47:44 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
jdespres at MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM writes:

> suppose a guy reading a Philip
>  Roth novel happened upon a word that inspired him to flip through
>  his Hebrew dictionary, and suppose, in doing so, he came upon a
>  Hebrew phrase that he realized sounded an awful lot like the as-yet-
>  unexplained Southernism  "copacetic," and that meant virtually the
>  same thing. Now, this might strike the average person as a
>  genuine discovery, and a very likely solution to the problem, but
>  somebody who's actually done etymological work could tell you
>  with no hesitation that (a) chance sound-resemblances, even
>  among semantically similar words, are legion and don't mean
>  anything in and of themselves and (b) the borrowing situation is just
>  too unlikely to be believed:

For the record, it was I  who sent M-W the suggestion that "copasetic" came
from the Hebrew expression "chol b'seder".   I also noted that the M-W 10th
Collegiate date was 1919, and suggested that Gentile soldiers in World War I
had picked up the expression from Jewish fellow soldiers.

Joanne responded with the datum that M-W had anecdotal evidence that
"copasetic" had been known in the 1880's, which as far as I am concerned
totally shot down my idea.

I heard "chol b'seder" in conversation; I have never read a Philip Roth novel.

>  it's very hard to imagine how the
>  uneducated Christian southerners who first used "copacetic" would
>  have contact with the classical Hebrew phrase posited as its
>  source.

What Joanne said to me was that very few Christians read the Bible in the
original languages, a statement that I agree is true even though the very day
I received her reply I stopped by my local library and saw my boss check out
a book on Biblical Greek.

        - James A. Landau (the "A" stands for "Amateur")
          systems engineer---don't call me a lawyer unless you have your
Mills belt on