A moment of private reflection

The other day, when I wasn't working my ass off in one of the 6 elementary schools I work at daily (that every day more closely resemble death camps...only kidding), I poked around on Wikipedia, as is my usual wont. I swear, if I would've known about Wikipedia 5 years ago, I never would've gone to college. Why bother when you have an absolutely bottomless, free hypertext website to continue your own private study? I honestly think Wikipedia is one of the greatest inventions of all time; free information that is democratic in all the best ways. Each link leads to new ideas, every complex term links to an explanation, and lists several sources either online or off to further your research. Let alone the fact that it is, within reason, reader-controlled content. People like to rag on Wikipedia for relaxed fact-checking, but I think it's very heavily patrolled for factual accuracy, on the topics that matter; because the topics matter to the specialists and researchers posting about them. Of course, stoned slackers will always mess around with the internet, but even so, Wikipedia rectifies their mistakes in less time than it takes me to talk about it, for the most part.

Aaaaanyway, while I was clicking around about arabic and linguistics, I discovered a term I was unfamiliar with - "calque". I'm sure you'll click the link, but the overview is that calques are not loanwords, but rather direct translations of words/phrases/compounds from other languages. Pretty neat, really.

But, one thing totally stopped me in my tracks.

"English Milky Way calques Latin via lactea, which is itself derived from the Greek root galaxias [γαλαξίας], meaning "milky."<sup>[47]"

This seems so self-evident, I wonder why I hadn't wondered about it before. A couple of smart Greeks used to lay around and look at the stars, and before all the light-pollution, they could see out into space. Sure, they thought a lot of what they saw out there were constellated divinities, but when they saw the Milky Way, they used a rough, down-home adjective to describe this undescribable hugeness. They couldn't possibly understand what they were staring at, and they called it milky because it gently radiated light from a vast area, not just a few points.

We still use the Greek-derived root. Lactose intolerant (after it's modification into Latin), Lactation, etc.

But, this has mind-blowing implications for me. The same substance lovingly issued from the breasts of mamalian mothers, such a free, organic life-giving substance shares the same origin as all galaxies, everything far away beyond our horizons. To have such a domestic term labelled on all inconceivable expanses of stars and planets is very humbling and simultaneously aggrandizing experience.

Also, it means that, by a manner of tweaking, Galactus' (of Marvel's Fantastic Four fame) name essentially means something like "Milk," as it's the normal Greek root taking the latin nominal -us case ending. I suppose it's closer to lactus or lactae in the latin, and "Galactus" probably has no meaning. ...But, still. Such a huge presence, one of the few major forces of the Universe, the devourer of planets, essentially shares a communal moniker with the issue from a tit. What a blow to his pride.

Lastly, it makes me think about every deep, philosophical conversation that has ever transpired in English about the nature of the universe. Essentially, every "Galaxy," seen or unseen, is just another blot of milk to the human eye, and all the high-minded rhetoric boils down, as it inevitably does, to common human issues (no pun intended), and sexual body parts.

Just a few thoughts. Did you come across any while reading? Post!</sup>