POLL
Wild Word Friday!
Those of us living in the USA are enduring a pre-election season of skirmishes, interviews and civilized (and some uncivilized) vitriol. So I suppose that when you see the word POLL you immediately think of all the commotion and aggravations that seem to be a part of an election year, but let’s step away from aggravation to discover the roots of an election-year word like POLL.
POLL comes to the English language via the Middle English and the Middle Dutch pol or polle, which refers to the head, particularly the crown of the head. Gradually pol came to mean an individual person and then morphed from that to the idea of one vote cast by one individual person, and then from there POLL came to designate the whole aggregate of votes that people cast in an election.
So during this time of aggravating telephone POLLs and news POLLs and seemingly endless POLLs on seemingly endless debates, let’s also take a minute to realize how fortunate we are to have the right to count as an individual, one person, and that our vote also counts, that our voice can be heard. And when you get the chance, thank a veteran for what he or she did to keep that incredible freedom in your life and mine.
Have a blessed Memorial Day weekend!
Sue
(Some information from Webster’s New World Dictionary. Photograph from Wikipedia.)
We don’t get your election polls here in Canada, of course, but we get a lot of the TV commercials when campaigning is happening in the PNW.
In Canada our May long weekend isn’t Memorial Day, but Victoria Day… on the Monday before May 25th, and it commemorates Queen Victoria, who was the first sovereign of a confederated Canada. It’s also the time we celebrate the official (if not the actual) birthday or our current queen, Queen Elizabeth. When a poll was taken here, we found many people thought the monarchy had outlived its purpose and our ties with England should be severed, but I rather like it, and hope it continues.
Happy Memorial Day weekend to you!