Scriptural Vignette Cameo Study #6
Taches - Ouches - Chapiters
Exodus 26:6 & 28:11 & 36:38
The King James employs a few older words, which seem odd, even foreign to us — but if approached from a philological perspective, considering the etymologies and word families, the words make more sense. It is not that the words are too archaic, but that most modern minds in the U.S. have lost touch with their own historical, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural roots (in the ever-sinking descent into the Babylonian melting pot) and can’t see the forest for the trees. The dumbing down of the U.S. and departure from teaching our historical languages and history has stymied the minds of most Americans who are only taught a little of a language foreign to our people (Spanish), which is mostly useless in understanding English and our family of languages; instead of teaching German, French, and Latin and Biblical Greek.
Taches
“And thou shalt make fifty taches of gold, and couple the curtains together with the taches: and it shall be one tabernacle.” (Exodus 26:6)
[This word, at first glance, seems odd, like an archaeological artifact out of place. However, the word is actually part of a word that most people use in common speech. What is it that these “taches” do? They join or affix different sections of curtains together — and thus, the word is perfectly understood when one considers our word attach / attaches / attached / attachment (referring to the verb, or the noun form for someting that clasps, fastens). Related words are tack, from Old / Old North French, tache / taque, “nail, pin, peg, tack, spike”; related to Middle Dutch, tacke, “twig, spike”, Frisian, tak, “a tine, prong, twig, branch”, Low German, takk, “tine, pointed thing”, and Modern German, Zacken* “sharp point, tooth, prong”.
* Understand also that in German z is pronounced tz (as the zz in pizza); which harks back to the Hebrew letter “ts”, tsaddiy (which, oddly, does not have its counterpart in Greek [though was possibly corrupted into the Greek letter psi]; the Greek language being derived from the Hebrew; and the Latin from the Greek).
Similarly x is the same as ks, as in tacks.
Tack / tach was derived from the Proto-Germanic or Indo-European Root (IER) *tag-, meaning, “a small, sharp nail with a flat head” and also, “a rope to hold the corner of a sail in place”. Tacking is the maneuver in sailing a ship, which is used to change direction via an oncoming wind. In German tag and many other words, the g is a guttural “ch”, “kh” “ck”.
The Modern German word Tag means, “day”; in Anglo-Saxon (Old English), dæg; Old Frisian, dei; Old Norse, dagr; Gothic, dags; and is believed to derive from the IER *dhegh-, “to burn”; and thus, the word for day (Tag) and the original word for tack (Tag) are etymologically unrelated; though they look similar. The “a” in the English word day is a “long a”, ei / ey. The plural of modern German “day”, Tag, was Täg in some older dialects, but now more commonly Tage; which “ä” suggests that the singular is what changed from a “long a” sound (ay / ey) to a “short, open throat a” as in father; similarly the German word for “father”, vater (the v is an f; the “a” is the same as in father) becomes Väter in the plural. D and T are very similar in Germanic languages, and are often interchanged; and even “dt” is a common pair in German words / names, showing the close relation of the two consonants (even as the close relation between v and f / ph, and in German, “pf”).]
Ouches
“With the work of an engraver in stone, like the engravings of a signet, shalt thou engrave the two stones with the names of the children of Israel: thou shalt make them to be set in ouches of gold.” (Exodus 28:11)
[The problem with understanding this older word is the confusion of it with the verbal expression of pain, spelled exactly the same: ouch. However, the meaning of the word would be more-easily recognized if it were properly pronounced, which would be more noticeable if spelled ooches (singular ooch); and then in it might be seen the words brouche / brooch / broche / broach* (originally referring to a spit, skewer, bodkin, long pin / needle / knife, or spear, lance, javelin, other pointed tool, used originally for roasting an animal over the fire; then, “an ornamental clasp consisting of a pin and a covering shield”). Regardless of how it is spelled, it refers to “a jewel setting”; from Anglo-Norman (une) ouche / (une) nouch. Nouch is from a verbal root meaning “to twist together”. Brooches can be considered more ornate, fancy, bejeweled “taches”, or clasps, buckles, pins, etc. for fastening pieces of clothing or other fabric (such as curtains) together; and eventually, an ornate jewel / jewelry that is pinned to the clothing. Etymologically related to it is the word brocade, “a silken fabric with gold and silver sewn / woven into it, or decorated in similar baroque** fashion”.
* to broach a topic means, “to pierce or interject”.
** which word, I venture, may share a similar etymology.]
Chapiter
“And the five pillars of it with their hooks: and he overlaid their chapiters and their fillets with gold: but their five sockets were of brass.” (Exodus 36:38)
[The pillars or columns of the Tabernacle Courtyard had chapiters, or an ornate upper portion (a header, or as in a fancy room jointing the top of a wall to the ceiling, like crown molding). The meaning of this word is realized by comparison to its many related words: capital, chapter, (and even chapel and a cappella) captain (head of an army, more modernly called commander or general), cap, capitulate,* the French family name Capet (from Hugh Capet, founder of the Capetian dynasty), and the German word kaputt;** capot, in French, also refers to the “head”, more commonly, the “bonnet” or “hood” of a car). CAPET is also an acronym for a (chief) degree for a technical teaching diploma, Certificat d’Aptitude au Professorat de l’Enseignement Technique). Both Capet and capot come from cape, originally meaning “a covering for the head”; whence also is derived the French word for “hat”, chapeau and our word cap; as is cappuccino (named for the swirl color pattern of the “head” or “cap” of milky froth on the flavored coffee), named from the monkish order Capuchin (for which the monkey species was named), noted for their characteristic capuccio (from cappa), the long, pointed hoods / heads on their capes. Similarly a protusion of land into a bay of water is called a cape (possibly the origin of the phrase, “beach head”); even as the opening of a river into a bay is called a “mouth” (or delta, due to the triangular shape of the estuary opening, resembling the Greek letter delta, the capital of which is shaped like a triangle).
* Most sources think that the word capitulate comes from “an agreement of surrender on specified terms”, from French capitulation, noun of action from capituler, from Medieval Latin capitulare, “to draw up in heads or chapters”, from Classical Latin, capitulum “chapter, heading, little head”; diminutive of caput (genitive capitis) “head”, from supposed IER, *kaput- “head”. However, I disagree. This would refer to the “terms of capitulation” and “the document of capitulation”. I believe capitulate itself would be referring to the “bowing of the head and removal of the cap, crown, helmet in submission”.
** —borrowed from the French capot: a term used in a card game, piquet, in which the top [head / chief] winner was called faire capot; and the top [head / chief] loser was called, être capot.
Other related words would be: capsize, cattle / chattel, chef, chief / chieftain, decapitate, mischief (“adverse [come to an end of] head”); and the German, Haupt and Gothic, haubiþ.* Though other words, such as capture, captive, captivate are thought to have a different etymology, I imagine that they go back farther to referring to “seizing the head”; head can refer to the captain (which, if seized, the others may surrender), or cattle and people are often “counted by head”, as prisoners would be so counted. Other words are also related, such as: cadet (from Gascone, capdet) and cabbage (from old French, caboche, “head”; which rather renders “head of cabbage” redundant); as well as biceps, triceps, quadreceps (2-, 3-, 4-headed), etc. Finally, cab and caper* may also, if they could be traced farther back, may share in the same root as cap. Caper means to “leap, skip, prance”, which could have referred to the head being thrust upward. This is the meaning of cab, a light, easily maneuvered carriage, from cabriole / capriole “a leap, frisk, a caper”, presumably referring to the playful action of a young goat, from which the word capricorn and capricious are derived. A crime being called a caper, could refer to a quick in and out theft, or one that took some “brains” or “head” to plan it out. Finally, the tiny condiments called capers, from the Classical Latin capparis, from the Greek kápparis, are actually unopened flowerbuds of the caperbush that are then pickled (flower buds, of course, being “little heads” on the plant). Caperberries are larger, the size of grapes, which is the fully formed fruits, also pickled, but which can be seedy if they were too mature.
* The letters b and p are closely related, and often used interchangeably, as seen in the German Haupt (in older spellings, Haubt) and the Gothic haubiþ (the letter Þ / þ (thorn) = a hard th; th being closely related to the letter d, and often interchangeable, which is why the Norse name is often rendered “Dorn” instead of Thorn; or Dorr instead of Thorr). The soft th sound, represented by the letter Ð / ð (eth). Both th sounds have their counterparts in the Welsh, Ll / ll (soft the) and Dd / dd (hard th) and correspond to the Greek letter Theta (which seems to have had both pronunciations over time and dialect, though the hard th seems to have been more common). In fact, the other German word for “head”, Kopf is also derived from the same source as Haupt; from Old High German houbit-, IER, *haubid; related to the Dutch hoofd- and Old English (Anglo-Saxon) heafod-. In German, Kopf is used more commonly for the actual head on a body, whereas Haupt is used more in terms of a generalized “head, chief, main, top”, etc.]
[This is now ready: - Scriptural Vignette Cameo Studies - Volume 1 (#1 - Scheming Carnality — You Reap What You Sow; #2 - “I saw under the Altar the souls of them that were slain...” - Revelation 6; #3 - “Be Holy as I am Holy” - Exodus 22; #4 - Commandments: Obedience and Blessing, or Disobedience and Judgement - Exodus 23; #5 - The Seventy Elders & Seeing God - Exodus 24; #6 - Taches - Ouches - Chapiters - Exodus 26:6 & 28:11 & 36:38; #7 - Holiness and Sanctification - Exodus 30; #8 - God’s Grace - Exodus 32; #9 - Separation, Holiness, Goodness), 88pp., 7.00 + P&H.
and so is this: - Scriptural Vignette Cameo Studies, Volume 2, (#10 - Holiness and The Law - Exodus 34; #11 - Atonement and Purification: Separation and Holiness - Exodus 38 (and part of 39); #12 - The Great Commission - Matthew 28; #13 - Offended, not Grieved & Grieved, not Displeased - Mark 3:5 & II Samuel 6; #14 - Endless Genealogies - I Timothy 3:4 and Titus 3:9; #15 - Transfiguration / Fuller / Elijah & Moses / Immature Carnality - Mark 9), 88pp., 7.00 + P&H.
P&H = 10% (6.00 minimum P&H) within the U.S.]