Independence

This blog is supposed to be about words, books, and kids but I haven't blogged much about words for a while. Since this is Independence Day in the USA I decided to talk about the word, independence.

Depend is derived from a Latin word meaning to hang down from something, like a pendulum. It also means to rely on something. When America declared independence from England it meant this country would no longer rely on that government, but would have its own.

But "in" not only means inside of, sometimes it means 'not.' And the prefix, "un," also has that meaning. So why isn't the word undependence?

And now the individual states, counties, cities and people in America are all intertwined and interrelated so, even though we don't depend on another nation to govern us, the United States are interdependent. We could be called the Interdependent States of America. Of course we won't really change the name for lots of reasons.

I think language is fascinating and the English language is one of the most complex and interesting ones on the planet because it has been derived from and influenced by so many other languages.