[OT] sentances with two meanings

Michele Simionato mis6 at pitt.edu
Wed Jul 16 20:20:52 EDT 2003


Alan Kennedy <alanmk at hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<3F142A58.80426AA4 at hotmail.com>...
> Syver Enstad wrote:
> 
> > > Given the biblical meaning of "known", this could have even more than
> > > two meanings :-)
> > 
> > Does "to know" in english also mean to feel someone? In my own language
> > the direct translation of the english know also means to feel. I could
> > say (translated) "I know the cold", meaning I feel the cold
> > weather.
> 
> To "know" someone, in the biblical sense, is to have "carnal
> knowledge" of them, i.e. "knowledge of the flesh", i.e. to have had
> sexual relations with them.
> 
> Some of the English translations of the bible use terms such as "And
> Adam knew Eve, and Eve begat 2 children", etc, etc. These translations
> are probably from the middle ages, or earlier.


It comes at least from the Latin version and I would not be surprised
if the double sense of "known" was in the Greek version too (any Greek
here?).

Now, Latin had to verbs for "to know": "scire" and "cognoscere". 
Only  the second one had the sexual double meaning. The double meaning
has been preserved in modern latin languages:

Italian -> conoscere
French -> connaitre
Spanish -> conocer

The other verb "scire" has generated (if I am not mistaken) "sapere",
savoir", "saber"  and of course "science", which are sexually clean,
at least as
far as I know ;)


P.S. according to http://www.freedict.com/cgi-bin/onldict.cgi

scio -> to know, understand.
cognosco -> to examine, inquire, learn




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