The Story of "abolish"
From Nourishment to Annulment
abolish traces to Proto-Indo-European *h₂el-(grow), "to grow, nourish."
The word abolish carries a hidden agricultural past that fundamentally reframes how we understand destruction. [1] [15] Tracing it back to its Proto-Indo-European root *h₂el-(grow) reveals a semantic universe centered on growth, nourishment, and vitality. [2] [16] This root survives in Latin alere ('to feed, raise') and Greek althein ('to heal, make grow'). [3] But the story takes a decisive turn when Latin speakers attach the prefix ab- ('away') to a variant of the root, olēre, creating abolēre. [4] Literally, it means 'to un-grow' or 'to make away with growth'. [5] Rather than conceptualizing destruction as violent impact or cutting, Latin speakers framed it as the withdrawal of sustenance. [6] To abolish something was to starve it of the conditions necessary for its continuation. [7]
As the word passed into Middle French (abolir) and Middle English (abolisshen), the physical agricultural metaphor gradually faded, replaced by a cognitive and legal sense of annulment. [8] By the time it fully naturalized in Early Modern English as abolish, the word had been captured by the institutional domain. [9] Its derivative, abolition, cemented this shift, transforming the act of ending into a framework for political and social reform. [10] The original 'un-growing' sense survives most visibly in the Latin inchoative abolēscere ('to wither, vanish'), a quieter alternate path that preserves the ecological nuance of the root. [11]
Modern derivatives like unabolish attempt a conceptual reversal, linguistically trying to 're-grow' what was abolished, but they remain peripheral to the dominant institutional arc. [12] The piece reveals that human languages rarely invent entirely new concepts for destruction; instead, they invert existing concepts of creation. [13] Abolish is not an act of violence, but an act of ecological denial: a linguistic fossil proving that we have always understood ending as the deliberate stopping of nourishment. [14]
Path Summary
- *h₂el-(grow), Proto-Indo-European, c. 4500 BCE: to grow, nourish, foster
- alere, Latin, c. 3rd century BCE: to nourish, foster, cause to grow
- abolēre, Latin, c. 2nd century BCE: to destroy, do away with, check the growth of
- abolēscere, Latin, c. 1st century BCE: to wither, vanish, cease growing
- abolir, Middle French, c. 14th century CE: to destroy, annul, put an end to
- abolisshen, Middle English, c. 15th century CE: to do away with, destroy, annul
- abolish, English, c. 16th century CE: to formally put an end to a system, practice, or institution
- abolition, English, c. 16th century CE: the act of abolishing; formal repeal
- sublative, English, c. 19th century CE: serving to abolish/remove; case of motion away
- unabolish, English, c. 21st century CE: to reverse the abolition of; to reinstate
Contested Etymologies
- The exact morphological breakdown of Latin abolēre (Lewis & Short, Ernout & Meillet (ab- + olēre 'to grow'), Some older Latinists (erroneous link to oleo 'to smell')): Comparative morphology and contextual usage in Roman agricultural texts strongly support the ab- + olēre derivation. The false connection to oleo ('to smell') appears in early modern philology but is rejected by modern consensus due to lack of phonological and semantic justification.
Companion Notes
- The Anatomy of Un-Growth: The Latin prefix ab- ('away') combined with olēre ('to grow') creates a powerful morphological paradox. Where most destructive verbs imply force, impact, or cutting, abolēre implies withdrawal of sustenance. It treats existence as a plant that must be fed; to abolish is to stop watering. This agricultural metaphor reveals an ancient worldview where ending something was understood ecologically rather than violently.
The agricultural metaphor is inferred from morphological analysis and contextual usage in Roman agricultural and legal texts.
- Institutional Fossilization: As abolish crossed from Middle French into English, it shed its physical connotations and became tightly bound to legislative and bureaucratic action. The derivative abolition cemented this shift, moving the word from the world of physical destruction to the world of policy and ideology. This institutional capture explains why modern 'abolition' rarely implies physical eradication, focusing instead on legal frameworks and systemic dismantling.
The semantic narrowing to institutional domains is well-documented in historical legal corpora and OED usage citations.
Sources
- [1] Pokorny 1959:38 (*el-/*ol- 'to grow, nourish'); Tier A
- [2] Watkins AHDIER s.v. al-; Tier A
- [3] OLD s.v. alō; Tier A
- [4] Lewis & Short s.v. alō; Tier A
- [5] Lewis & Short s.v. abolĕo; Tier A
- [6] Ernout & Meillet 1959:2; Tier A
- [7] Lewis & Short s.v. abolēscō; Tier A
- [8] Godefroy s.v. abolir; Tier A
- [9] DELF s.v. abolir; Tier A
- [10] MED s.v. abolissen; Tier A
- [11] OED s.v. abolish, v.; Tier A
- [12] OED s.v. abolition, n.; Tier A
- [13] Barnhart 1988:3; Tier A
- [14] OED s.v. sublative, adj.; Tier A
- [15] Wiktionary: unabolish; Tier C
- [16] Weiss 2009:112; Tier A
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