Etymology

Etymology, to know the meaning of symbols as far back as we can trace them in history, as they were intended to mean and as they were imbued with meaning. These symbols themselves trace back to reality to represent aspects of being (metaphysics) in reality. Reality itself is represented in symbols. To know the meaning of a word is to know what it represents in reality. We could name any part of reality anything we want, but we would have to create a new language. Existing languages already have definition with meaning imbued into it, we cannot simply redefine words. Attempts to do so can create confusion with the use of the same term to represent reality differently. To go back to the etymological root and learn the true meaning of a word is to establish firm grounding between the symbols we use and the reality they represent. Conventions from society do sometimes impose altered meaning on the words to change what they originally mean. It is true that people using the same word to refer to the same thing will have a common understanding of what they are referring to, but the original meaning and power of the word is lost to them, they are using it in a different and altered way than it was originally created and imbued with meaning to convey. This creates an alteration in the descriptive capabilities of reality. The alteration can be to improve the detail and clarity of a definition, but can often be to distort and obfuscate the true power of the name to reference reality and understand reality correctly.