the not-so-dismal science

what the etymology of economics says about the family

One of my favorite rhetorical techniques is when speakers get to the bottom of an idea through etymology. At a wedding I attended over the weekend, the priest explained the meaning of “sincerity.” During the Renaissance, Spanish sculptors who made mistakes while carving expensive marble often patched their flaws with “cera,” wax. A statue that had no flaws and required no patching was hailed as a sculpture “sine cera” — a sculpture "without wax.” The phrase eventually came to mean anything honest or true.

Sine cera. Sincerity.