>fact that you can't imagine a functioning human society
>without competition is a testament to the effective,
>thorough socialization you've received in a society
>that values competition.
Dear Mr. Jackson:
I thoroughly object to your female-demeaning language above.
You use the word "testament" and apparently can't imagine a functioning human society that doesn't use words derived from testicles is a "testament" to the effective, and thorough socialization you've received in a society that values male testicles too much.
Sincerely, a dedicated reader,
Ken.
-- Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.
-- Phillip K. Dick
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A private view of testimony
By WARREN CLEMENTS Globe and Mail Oct. 22 2003
Words have the darnedest ancestors. Consider our court system, in which people testify and give testimony. Who, apart from those already in the know, would link those words to the testicles?
All three words derive from the Latin word testis, meaning witness, which is also the source of protest and attest. The testicles got their name from the diminutive form, testiculi, meaning little witnesses, because they bore witness to a man's virility (vir being Latin for man). In fact, a letter to Ms. magazine once protested against the use of the word testimony when referring to a woman's statements, "because the root is testes, which has nothing to do with being a female." The letter-writer suggested substituting "ovarimony."
The connection with witnesses is stronger still. It is claimed that in Roman times, male witnesses at trials would place their hands over their genitals when swearing to tell the truth. In a recent letter to Britain's Private Eye magazine, D. G. Fletcher Rogers said the Roman witness "then took the oath to the effect if he told porkies the testicula would be cut off." (Porkies, short for pork pies, is Cockney rhyming slang for lies.) Margaret Ernst, whose word-origin book In a Word has the distinction of being illustrated by James Thurber, wrote of the word testify: "Dating back to Biblical times, a witness swore to the truth, or testified, by placing his hand on the source of life and manhood, the testes. The King James version, in a polite euphemism, says that an oath is taken by placing the hand upon the thigh."
Ernst herself is being coy when she says the hand was placed on "the" thigh, since the private parts did not need to be one's own. In the Book of Genesis, Abraham tells his servant to "put your hand under my thigh" to swear that he would "not take a wife for my son from the daughter of the Canaanites . . . So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master, and swore to him concerning the matter." Later in the book, Jacob asks his son Joseph to do the same.
The Oxford Annotated Bible says this "old form of oath-taking reflected the view that the fountain of reproductivity was sacred to the deity." Similarly, A New Standard Bible Dictionary (whose editors in 1926 included the impressively named Melancthon W. Jacobus) wrote: "In exceptional cases the hand might be placed upon the thigh of the person, imposing the oath as a sign of regard for the mystery of generation, whose source was God."
It is safe to say that any attempt to revive this protocol in a modern courtroom might be misunderstood, and that one or other of the parties might get testy -- which derives not from testis but from teste, the head, since testy meant headstrong before it meant short-tempered. And no, there won't be a test.