GALAXY

Wild Word Friday!

If you are fortunate enough to live or visit where city lights don’t mask the night sky, you probably spend portions of your life like I do – looking up and being amazed at the Milky Way, an earth-based view of part of our GALAXY.

In one of his poems (written pre-1385), Geoffrey Chaucer writes, “Se yonder, loo, the Galaxie/Which men clepeth the Milky Way…” One of the things I love about Chaucer’s writing is that he often uses a dual approach of Germanic/Latinate references within his work. In this case, via Latin: GALAXY. Via the Germanic, Milky Way.

During Chaucer’s time the English language was still adjusting to the influence of the Latinate words that were first introduced after the British defeat at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The French language was high class. The Germanic-based English, not so much, but Chaucer revelled in the blend.

As obvious in Chaucer’s poem, we can trace the English word GALAXY back hundreds of years. It comes to us through the French and the Latin from the Greek word, galaxias, which holds its root word within it, gala, which means milk. The milk in Milky Way comes to us from the Middle English word melk and the Anglo Saxon milc. 

 So we not only inherited the Latin word GALAXY, but we also use the Germanic form, Milky Way. 

Isn’t it great to take a journey through the history of words and discover all over again the importance of the stars?

Do you love looking at the night sky as much as I do?

(Thank you to The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories for some of the information contained in this post!)

Blessings!

Sue