CALGACUS03
Ephemeral Spectre
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2004
- Messages
- 481
- Location
- The Wee County
... the noun "desert" originally connoted something abandoned / forsaken and only later came to mean a particular type of barren / arid place. This preceded the earliest known usage as a verb, which similarly meant "to abandon" / "to forsake", and only later came to specifically mean "to leave without permission."
Thanks for your comment EnolaGaia, the connection between the verb and noun had never really dawned on me until I was actually writing the post and as I said; it was an 'OMG' moment.
I suppose too that I would have to take into account the that Life of Saint Columba (Vita Columbae) would have been written in Latin, and so I'm at the mercy of the translation as to the exact words used by Adomnan in the original.
If asked, prior to making the possible connection above, though for a simile of the verb 'to desert' I would probably have said 'to abandon', i.e. the physical act of leaving someone/something in order to go to a place or places unknown. It would never have occurred to me that it might mean 'to leave someone/something in order to seek a desert' - that's what totally tickled me.
Edited to add link to Vita Columbae