[sheepdestroyer]

"The vast majority of people" would use words without thinking they have etymology and meaning?

Maybe you're only thinking about religious people who would have encountered this one in such a context?

I don't frequent any so I am clueless, but if true I would suspect there could be more than correlation to the aptitude to use words without meaning and religiosity.

[da_chicken]

The vast majority of people learn the definition of words by hearing them used in context repeatedly. Very few people look up the definition of words, and nobody looks up the definition of most words they know.

In this case I doubt many people have heard the word "synoptic" in any other context. That makes it a rather meaningless word.

[Suppafly]

>In this case I doubt many people have heard the word "synoptic" in any other context. That makes it a rather meaningless word.

This and that's sorta what I found interesting, most people don't realize a word they've only heard in the context of religion actually has a definition outside of, and predating, that context and that definition more or less explains the religious usage.

[da_chicken]

I know when I first heard it, my mind went to "canopic jars". Canopic is from Canopus, a name from Greek mythology. I mean, who's to say that there wasn't a guy or place named Synoptus? The Nicene Creed is named after the Council of Nicea, which took place in the city of the same name.

The fact that synopsis is a Greek word makes it even harder to discern because a lot of names and terms of early Christianity are Greek, just as much as Latin names and terms come along later. I don't think it's a religious thing at all. I think it's going to be common to anything that has a lot of terminology that is rooted in a foreign language and culture.

[Suppafly]

>"The vast majority of people" would use words without thinking they have etymology and meaning?

That mostly seems to be true whenever you talk to people who don't specifically have some interest in linguistics.

>Maybe you're only thinking about religious people who would have encountered this one in such a context?

Yeah, presumably the original questioner (and myself because it's not something I've ever given much thought towards) didn't realize synoptic had a definition outside of religion, because knowing the definition would have answered their question.

[lolinder]

> knowing the definition would have answered their question.

This is often untrue, though—words will evolve along parallel tracks and often diverge quite significantly in how they're used across different contexts. In those cases the homonyms make for fun etymological deep dives but don't help much for deriving the specialized meaning from the more general one.

[Suppafly]

>This is often untrue, though—words will evolve along parallel tracks and often diverge quite significantly in how they're used across different contexts.

Sure that happens, but mostly when they are borrowed from language to language. Mostly in the english language, if you have a situation where you have synopsis and synoptic, it's more often than or not that they are different forms of the same word or closely related. I think it doesn't immediately register for people because those 'sis' words from Greek origin aren't used a ton in general speech. Genesis and genetic is a similar situation that many people probably don't realize they are related unless they are familiar with abiogenesis or such from science.

[lolinder]

> it's more often than or not that they are different forms of the same word or closely related

Correct, but what I'm saying is that frequently etymologies are nothing more than fun exercises that would actually mislead you as to the modern definition because the word has changed so much. In those cases it's amusing to identify the shared root but you should be careful about blindly translating from one to the other. The original sense is often somewhere in the middle of the two modern meanings.

Taking your example of Genesis: if I know that Genesis means "the first book in the Bible" that doesn't help me derive the definition of "genetic" all by itself. Likewise if I know the "genetic" means "relating to the structures that encode traits in living organisms", I won't be able to arrive at "the first book in the Bible". At best I might come up with some folk etymology explaining that Genesis has to do with life, which is close but not fully accurate.

The correct understanding of the shared root of "creation" is only possible if you understand both concepts and triangulate to what they have in common. It cannot be derived from only one of the two definitions.