Are You Steady?

This morning during my prayer time I noticed how steady the candle flame was, burning straight and quietly. Maybe I noticed because the other day I had a candle so flickering and fluttering I had to blow it out. I was beginning to feel dizzy and ill even if I didn't look at it directly.

I'm fascinated by words and as I thought about the steadiness of the candle flame I wondered where the word came from and about it's meaning. I got this from an etymology site:

steady(adj.)

1520s, "firmly fixed in place or station" (displacing earlier steadfast, which came to be used of persons and characters), from stead + adjectival suffix -y (2), perhaps on model of Middle Dutch, Middle Low German stadig.

Words, Words, Words -- Steppingstones to the Word Made Flesh!

My mother loved words. She used to read the dictionary. Really! It amused us children, but as an adult I appreciate her fascination with words.

I was thinking about that this morning at adoration. I'm reading The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger who became Pope Benedict XVI. As I read the section on Sacred Time I thought, "I want to look up the derivation of some of these words: liturgy, reality, epiphany, cosmology."

 It isn't that I don't understand what I'm reading and need word definitions. But I think understanding can be enriched by plumbing the depth of word meanings. Where did they come from? How has the word changed? Why does the author use this particular word instead of another? I guess that's my inner English major coming out.