What Does Soil Have to Do with Sitting?

Hi, this is Jiro.

A gardener planted a young tree in my garden and advised me to water it slowly, little by little. Otherwise, he said, the water would not reach the thirsty young roots.

I did as I was told for about a week. Then one day, no matter how carefully I watered it, the water refused to soak into the ground.

Acting on a hunch, I put a good amount of soil around the spot where the newly planted tree disappeared into the ground, and tried watering it again.

All right! The water slowly seeped into the mound of earth. I could almost visualize it being absorbed by the thirsty young roots underground.

I couldn’t help wondering at the almost magical power of earth. At the same time, I felt a strong urge to do some research on “soil”—the hidden but no less important stage on which gardening takes place.

So I did some digging.

And I dug out some amazing relationships between words across time.

◯ The hypothetical Indo-European root sed-, meaning “to sit,” lies far back in the history of soil, though there is a lot of etymological coming and going in between.

◯ The same root sed- is also related to such familiar words as sit, seat, and set.

◯ It even turns up, by a much more winding route, in possess. Far back in its history is the idea of “sitting upon” or occupying something. In a sense, if you can sit on it, it is yours!

◯

A gardener planted a young tree in my garden and advised me to water it slowly, little by little. Otherwise, he said, the water would not reach the thirsty young roots.

I did as I was told for about a week. Then one day, no matter how carefully I watered it, the water refused to soak into the ground.

Acting on a hunch, I put a good amount of soil around the spot where the newly planted tree disappeared into the ground, and tried watering it again.

All right! The water slowly seeped into the mound of earth. I could almost visualize it being absorbed by the thirsty young roots underground.

I couldn’t help wondering at the almost magical power of earth. At the same time, I felt a strong urge to do some research on “soil”—the hidden but no less important stage on which gardening takes place.

So I did some digging.

And I dug out some amazing relationships between words across time.

◯ The hypothetical Indo-European root sed-, meaning “to sit,” lies far back in the history of soil, though there is a lot of etymological coming and going in between.

◯ The same root sed- is also related to such familiar words as sit, seat, and set.

◯ It even turns up, by a much more winding route, in possess. Far back in its history is the idea of “sitting upon” or occupying something. In a sense, if you can sit on it, it is yours!

◯ Then there is assess. Its ancestor meant something like “to sit facing” something.

From sitting facing something, we eventually get the modern idea of assessing its value.

And, amazingly, size is a distant relative too. The original form is said to have been very similar to assess. Over centuries of linguistic changes, the word was cut down until only the part representing SED remained, finally to become size.

All this made me curious about what soil itself would look like on the scale of Mother Earth.

What I found was surprising.

On the scale of the Earth, soil is indeed only a thin “membrane” covering part of its surface. Compared with rocks, it is a transient, ever-changing thing—formed, moved, eroded, and formed again. And yet this fragile layer is fertile enough to support plants, agriculture, and much of human life.

That amazes me.

I dug into the ground and found a rich world of words around soil.

The soil turned out to be rich linguistically, too.

Learning languages is full of surprises, isn’t it?

Happy English learning!

All this made me curious about what soil itself would look like on the scale of Mother Earth.

What I found was surprising.

On the scale of the Earth, soil is indeed only a thin “membrane” covering part of its surface. Compared with rocks, it is a transient, ever-changing thing—formed, moved, eroded, and formed again. And yet this fragile layer is fertile enough to support plants, agriculture, and much of human life.

That amazes me.

I dug into the ground and found a rich world of words around soil.

The soil turned out to be rich linguistically, too.

Learning languages is full of surprises, isn’t it?

Happy English learning!