On Fri, 1 Jul 2005, Doug Henwood wrote:
> he swore, based on "7 years of studying Greek & Latin," that if you go
> further back, they have a common root.
The first rule of etymology is that if you haven't got documentary evidence, you got nothing.
But the obvious refutation is that it's very clear from the OED's point of view when the word terrorism was first used -- it was to describe the terrorisme of the French revolution. Which, as Justin points out, isn't really the origin of the modern idea of terrorism (which interestingly corresponds more closely to what was going on at the same period in Spain, where they invented the word "guerrilla"). But it's certainly the first word use. So we can say for the fact that when people first started using the word, "dirt" had nothing to do with their world of reference.
So even if we accepted arguendo (which as far as I know, no etymologist does) that terror went back beyond Latin, beyond Greek, to the Indo-European root "terr" for earth, it still would have nothing to do with the word because nobody ever meant that when they used it.
I find it kind of inherently funny that someone should think "dirt" was such an awful insult. That would probably be the nicest thing terrorists have ever been called.
Michael