The Lexington intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1901-1949, 1903-01-31
AN INTERESTING STUDY.
Words, Each One Has a History
Worth Investigating.

Worth Investigating.
Prof. Max Muller, who made the
history of language his life study,
says that every word has a biography,
beginning with its birth, or at least
its baptism. It has a childhood, .
youth, a manhood and an old age
even a death-and it leaves heirs and
successors. 1t has all sorts of strange
adventures in its life, travelling from
one country to another, and from one
century to the next, often so chang
ing in its form that one would hardly
believe it to be still the same old word.
Tahe, for instance, the word "per-
son." which is, of course, the Latin
persona" In early days persona"
meant a mask made Of thin wood on
clay, such as was worn by the actors
of Rome. The story goes that
famous actor, Roscius Gallus (about
100 years B. CO., introduced masks
(which had been unknown before) on
the Roman stage, because he had the
misfortune to squint. This may or
may not be true, but it looks very
much as if some malicious friend Of
the actor had invented it, for if Ros-
cius really did use a mask pur-
pose Of hiding blemishes, why was the
name given to it at that time "per-
sona," or shat which causes the voice
to sound?"
1t seems hard to believe that the
great Greek actors, too, should have
worn these masks and have lost, by
doing it, that most powerful help in
acting, the expression Of the face;
but they did, and it is said that it was
really necessary for them, because,
without these "prosopao the Greek
word for "persona"), which in some
way strengthened the voice of the
wearer, they could not have made
themselves heard in the wide, open
air theaters of Greece. This seems to
explain why the masks should have
been called persona" or through
saunders in Latin, and makes the
story Of Roscius Gallus all the more
doubtful.
At any rate, whoever started the
word, whether a squirting actor, OIL
a maker Of musical instruments il
Rome-he had certainly no idei
where it was going, nor what a handy
useful word it would grow to be
From its first meaning Of mask, rep
resenting not the real, but the as
sumed character Of the actor, it sooI
took the sense Of false appearance,
and a dishonest man was spoken O
as wearing a person" But, later
an actor, wearing a kings mask, 70
example, was considered, for tn
time, to be a king, and in this wa.
persona came to neal instead o
mask, a mans real nature or charac
ter. Then it came to stand for "grea
parsonage or "person of rank.
/, That is what it meant in the middI
ages, and it is one of its meanings t
I this day. From this persona" cam
our modern "parson" and, last Of all
the world adopted the meaning W
] generally giyeitn now, "person" or "ir
J d~ividual."
E Here, says the St. Paul Globe,
, only a little outline Of the biograph
T of one word, but every one spoke
, has its own story, and not only thi
but each is able, when we study il
history, to tell us other stores abou
the ancient people who used it. Sue
I a word as "pasu," meaning cattle, i
India, Italy and Germany, tells thf
the people who first used it tethere
: their cattle, for "pasus comes froi
a root "pas," to fetter. The Sanskr
name for king, "ganaka," meanin
father, shows the high respect j
which fathers we're held; and otht
= words show whether weapons of woo
or bone or stone were in use in coui
E tries at certain times.
81 Italy's Finances.