ORIGIN OF JEALOUSY

PRIMARY APPLIED ETYMOLOGY – A WINDOW ON STONE AGE IS NOW OPEN

It is said three emotions are stronger even than fear, the strongest emotion in the animal kingdom – love, jealousy and avarice. We can tell you straight away that avarice originally was the hoarding of some type of plant food ‘gash’. ‘Qash’ in Arabic is “straw’ but it must have been some type of edible plants thatlooked like straw but was essential food available during famines. This could have started in east Africa, more than 60,000 years ago, and therefore the plant is native to Africa not Arabia.

*ĠR (Ġ = French ‘r’) is a bilateral or mono syllabic root morpheme, it could be either. From it is ĠāR “cavern” or a long cave. ĠaiR is “other people, other things”. ĠiRa is “jealousy”. ĠiR is “novice, a boy or a girl of little experience”.

So what’s the connection between these words of the same root origin?

It looks like a girl or a boy, but mostly girls, who is a ‘novice’ is convinced by sweet words that the young man is seriously in love so she walks behind him all the way to the ĠaR “cavern”. Shortly, or longly, afterwards she steps out into the present but her virginity is past tense.

The problem for the poor soul is that she’s now in love with the young boy. She’s watching him carefully at the water pool. The moment she sees another ‘novice’ girl walking behind him to the same ĠaR “cavern” she feels ĠiRa “jealousy”, because the other girl is a ‘ĠaiR. the’ “other girl” not her.

The same can apply to a boy in love with a girl walking behind another boy to see his wall etchings.

Curiously for Ancient Arabian, the mother of all mother tongues of Stone Age times, the word is both feminine and masculine probably because both feel the same jealousy. Curiously as well, we haven’t found, yet, an ancient root that could mean “rape”. The word ‘Ġassab’ “force, rape” is a newish migration. So, unless you regard ‘sweet talk’ as soft rape, consent is the general norm but cases of rape are possible though it looks it was not a major problem that warranted the invention of a specific word for it.

Why are we saying so?

Natural economies can’t support a large number of people in one place so the search for new sources of water and food is a lifetime quest. For the lucky few, sufficient sources are available for groups of around 100 people. So they are more or less one large family.

The root is one of linguistic units of two roots and both are almost always connected. The second root is *RĠ, a reversed *ĠR. From it is ‘RĠb’ “desire, want, must want”. Also ‘RĠd’ “good life, life of plenty”. Because all these words are connected, “desire” meant originally love or sex desire. If sex is available life is “good”. If sex is “plenty” life is even better.

Boys and girls haven’t changed, really, but think of this: You have the word “jealousy” in English and you know what it means but it doesn’t tell you the story of the origin of jealously. Only Stone Age etymology can open hitherto sealed windows to very ancient times, so stay with us for a while. We will surprise you because we are always surprised at how clever our ancestors were for embedding in very small words the true stories of their lives.

Words don’t lie, people do.