tantivy

Pronounced: tan-TIHV-ee, adv/noun/adj/interjection

Notes: Wow! A lot of parts of speech, and I didn’t know any of them

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Yesterday’s word

The word ahimsa is “the Hindu and Buddhist doctrine of refraining from harming any living being”

First usage

This word came into English in the late 1800s (but see below, too)

Background / Comments

Although the word goes back to the late 1800s, it didn’t become popular until Mahatma Ghandi popularized it in the first half of the 1900s as part of his teachings. Our word comes from a Sanskrit word meaning “noninjury”. While the philosophy sounds noble, I think that it is not fully practical… if you see “A” steal from “B” and inform the police and have “A” arrested, that has ‘harmed’ him… but if you do nothing, “B” is harmed by the loss. One can decide to avoid physically harming another, but are there not other kinds of harm?