Pros and Cons

Today a bit more about how warped the English language is. We have a habit of borrowing words from other languages and making them part of our own. Over a period of hundreds of years the exact original reason for picking one word or root word over another is lost. Our tendency is to steal a word and then over time to add prefixes and or suffixes to change the meaning of the word. Sometimes it just doesn't work though. Examples follow.

Pros and cons is a shortening of the Latin phrase pro et contra which literally means for and against. For the most part, when we make a list of pros and cons we are really setting up two lists, one of things that are good and the other a list of things that are bad. We often make lists such as these, compare the lists and then make some decision based on the comparison of the two lists.

Used in this context, pro is typically a good thing and con is typically a bad thing. A professional is someone that is good enough at a thing that they can and do in fact get paid to do that thing. So, a confessional should be someone who is so bad at that thing that there is no way they could ever get paid for doing it, right? No, a confessional is a place where people go to admit their sins. Wait! What?!?! Really? Actually, it is. Since the Latin root of the word confessional is fess, which means to speak, it makes perfect sense. Adding the prefix con, would make the word about having a "bad" talk. And what else would you call a conversation about the bad things you have done?

Next we have one that actually stands on its own as a word. Fusion. It is the act of blending or uniting things together. So, profusion should be the act of blending or uniting things together in a good way or a "forward" way. Well it is and it isn't. But, mostly it isn't. Profusion means a great amount of something or an abundance. So, confusion should mean a small amount of a thing or a lack of something right? It means bewilderment or perplexity. It means a lack of understanding. In a weird way profusion and confusion almost work as antonyms.

Then we move on to one of my favorite words to make fun of. You'll see what it is and why in a second. We start with progress. It means forward movement. Regress means backward movement. Digress means to move away from or deviate from the subject at hand. Egress means moving away from or finding a way out of a place. From these examples, you could rightly assume, that gress means movement and that the prefix applied to it means what kind of movement or what we are moving in.

So, we have this brand new country, one where the people forming it are doing their very best to learn from the mistakes of others. They are doing everything they can to make it a stable and lasting form of government. Why on Earth did they have to name one of the parts that make up this wonderful system Congress? Did they not realize that what they were actually calling it was bad movement or backwards movement?  Was the person who came up with this idea attempting to intentionally sabotage our system? Is it any wonder that it takes forever to get anything done? Why wasn't it called Progress? That's what we want out if it isn't it?

Names have power. They do limit to a certain degree what a person or thing can do or become. Perhaps we should change it. What do you think?