Initially Curious

I’m making a salad in my kitchen, listening to an audiobook or book summary, and the word initial just hits me.

I’ve heard this word my whole life, but I’m not sure I’ve really ever looked at it. Do you know this feeling? The word can start to sound silly and meaningless if you say it enough times, and you can even start to wonder if it’s even a real word.

In true “I lived before the internet” fashion, I explained how the semantic satiation works by comparing it to the internet:

Instead of being kept in a specific place, where a word is stored travels from one neuronal connection to another. This is a little bit like an internet connection between two neurons, with something like a dial-up connection when you first learn a word.

As you hear (or read) the word over and over again, this dial-up connection is upgraded to cable internet. Now, the connection is much stronger, and you can identify a word’s meaning in an instant. The neurons are firing at very high speeds.

I got here with the word initial pretty quickly, but then my mind shot past the usual finish line. I saw the word as potentially made up of other words, and I love getting to that phase of curiosity with a new word. I’m often wrong about the etymology, but sometimes I’m spot-on, and those moments are really fun.

Initially, I turned initial over in my mind. The prefix in- probably comes from Latin, I figured, but what about it? It looks sort of like “in it” starts the word, but I also know that the word it comes from the Proto-Germanic side of the English language family, so that’s probably wrong.

Next, I took the initiative and looked up the origins of the word family I was now drawn to. Initium is where the bread trail begins; the Romans used this word to refer to a beginning.

We can go further: initium itself begins with the Latin word in- (meaning into), so I was at least right about my initial inclination. The second part of the word comes from ire—Latin for to go. Put it all together, and you have something like to go into.

Going into something was the first step toward doing something, and the first step was the beginning. By taking the initiative, you could initiate a new project.