3 ms·
> the base word Is it really the same word? holistic comes from Greek ὅλος, whereas whole is a word of Germanic origin. Of course that doesn't mean they aren'
by waqf 9y ago
> the base word
Is it really the same word? holistic comes from Greek ὅλος, whereas whole is a word of Germanic origin.
Of course that doesn't mean they aren't from the same Indo-European root — after all, whole certainly has cognates in many languages with the same meaning, such as Russian целый. But Wiktionary tells me that whole is from Proto-Indo-European ٭kóylos, whereas holistic is from PIE
٭solh₂wós.
In any case, the initial w in whole is an innovation in Early Modern English without etymological justification, so a more logical choice to emphasize the similarity would be to revert to the spelling hole.
- kbenson 9y agoProbably not, but I was speaking much more informally. :) To be honest, I don't care whether it makes sense linguistically or not. It takes more than one hand to count the number of times I've looked up the meaning of holistic, because I encounter it in a context I care about so infrequently that I can never remember the meaning (at least I can never remember it accurately enough to not be unsure whether I have it correct. From context you can get the gist, but nuance may be lost). Wholistic works entirely better for me.