Religious

[Dr. Goodword]

• religious •

Pronunciation: ri-lij-ês • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Having a deep and abiding reverence and devotion to a deity or deities (antonym: secular). 2. Pertaining to religion. 3. Extraordinarily conscientious or attentive to something, focused, almost obsessive.

Notes: Today we have a word that means different things to different people. It is the adjective, of course, for religion, the belief in a deity or deities. It comes with two nouns, the straightforward religiousness and the rather deprecative religiosity "excessive religiousness".

In Play: The first sense of this word may be heard in comments like this: "Some Americans are so religious they are uncomfortable with the separation of church and state." The second, broadened, sense may be used this way: "Hiram undertook his studies at university religiously, leaving his girlfriend feeling abandoned."

Word History: Today's Good Word was borrowed from Old French religious (today religieux), inherited from Latin religiosus "conscientious, scrupulous, precise", the adjective for religio(n) "conscientiousness, moral obligation". Cicero thought it was created by combining re- "again, anew" + legere "to read". No one knows how re- made its way into Latin, but a lot is known about legere. For centuries etymologists have speculated that the original PIE word was leg-/log- "to collect, gather". There is some evidence of this in words like legion and legislature. However, they are hard pressed to explain how it could end up as lexis "word" in Greek and lex "law" in Latin. Since leg-/log- seems to have been a homophone with several other meanings in PIE ("lay" the most obvious), I have proposed that this leg-/log- originally meant "word" when the word of the monarch was the law.

[waseeley@gmail.com]

Religious can also be used as a noun, referring to people consecrated to the religious life, but not including priests. Religious include nuns, sisters, and monks. Priests are a separate category because only they can preside at Masses. The phrase "priests and religious" refers to all of the above consecrated persons.

[George Kovac]

Thank you, waseeley@gmail.com, for reminding me of that point. It is an example of the uniquely Catholic tradition that fascinated me as a child growing up in the Chicago Catholic schools. I enjoyed the complex and contradictory usages of language that serious Catholicism indulges. Most of my classmates found this kind of linguistic arcana boring, unimportant, annoying or intimidating. But I found it highly amusing and good preparation for law school, and what we lawyers do to words. Other grownup alums of Catholic schools found it a rich source of raw material for the comedy reviews that are a staple of the Chicago small theater scene, like the long running “Nunsence”.

Your observation about “religious” is correct. But wait! There is more! A member of a religious order (eg Benedictines, Dominicans, Jesuits, etc) who is not a priest (ie a monk or a nun) is a “lay religious.” A priest who is a member of a religious order is a “religious priest” (eg, many faculty members at Catholic universities). Conversely, a priest who is not a member of a religious order (eg, most parish priests) is a “secular priest.”

It gets worse. For a more detailed discussion of these hellish distinctions, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religio ... on_in_1917

The saving grace in this Byzantine linguistic labyrinth is that it has given us one of my favorite adjectives: “jesuitical” (I am referring to the secular, not religious, meaning of “jesuitical.”)

[Slava]

In case others like me need a refresher, the Good Doctor has treated jesuitical, capitalized here.

Casuistry, part of the definition of jesuitical, went to the Dr.'s office here.