Logos - Etymology and Linguistic Issues

Etymology and Linguistic Issues

In ordinary, non-technical Greek, logos had a semantic field extending beyond "word" to notions such as language, talk, statement, speech, conversation, tale, story, prose, proposition, and principle; and also thought, reason, account, consideration, esteem, due relation, proportion, and analogy.

Despite the conventional translation as "word," it is not used for a word in the grammatical sense; instead, the term lexis (λέξις) was used. However, both logos and lexis derive from the same verb legō (λέγω), meaning "to count, tell, say, speak".

Philo distinguished between logos prophorikos (the uttered word) and the logos endiathetos (the word remaining within). The Stoics also spoke of the logos spermatikos (the generative principle of the Universe), which is not important in the Biblical tradition, but is relevant in Neoplatonism. Early translators from Greek, like Jerome in the 4th century, were frustrated by the inadequacy of any single Latin word to convey the Logos expressed in the Gospel of John. The Vulgate Bible usage of in principio erat verbum was thus constrained to use the perhaps inadequate noun verbum for word, but later romance language translations had the advantage of nouns such as le mot in French. Reformation translators took another approach. Martin Luther rejected Zeitwort (verb) in favor of Wort (word), for instance, although later commentators repeatedly turned to a more dynamic use involving the living word as felt by Jerome and Augustine.

In English, logos is the root of the "-logy" suffix (e.g., geology).