WEBVTT

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Everyone knows that stories

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are made up of words,

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from short poems

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to epic novels.

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But did you know

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that a single word itself

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can tell an entire story?

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You see, just as we can look at a story's plot,

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setting,

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and characters,

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we can also study the history

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of an individual word,

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where it developed,

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and the cultures and people

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who helped shape it.

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Looking into the story of a word

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is like counting the rings of a tree.

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Newer words, like Google

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or cyborg,

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have shorter stories.

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But the older the word,

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the longer the story

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and the more it stands to reveal to us

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not only about itself,

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but about ourselves and our history.

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The oldest words in present day English

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are those that come from Old English,

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the ancestor of our modern language

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whose first seeds were planted

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about 1500 years ago.

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Compared to languages like Greek or Chinese

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that date back thousands of years,

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English is just a sapling in the lexical forest.

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But the stories of its words

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often start long before English itself took root.

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One such word is the familiar word true,

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as in true stories.

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Let's take a look.

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True usually means factual, correct,

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or faithful to reality.

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It can also mean exact,

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properly positioned,

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upright,

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or straight.

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A true friend is loyal,

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reliable,

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faithful,

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and steadfast.

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The word true is a simple word,

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and we can add some affixes

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to grow its family tree

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with words like truer,

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truest,

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truly,

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truth,

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and untruth.

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But if we go in the other direction

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to look at the roots of true itself,

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we find even more relatives

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further up the family tree.

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The words trust,

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bethroth,

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and truce

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all derive from the same source as true,

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and these words all denote faithfulness

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or confidence.

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A thousand years ago,

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the word true looked and sounded

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different than it does today.

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In several Old English dialects,

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the word treow was a noun

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that meant good faith or trust,

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a pledge or a promise.

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But it also had another definition,

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tree,

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and that's no coincidence.

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If we trace the roots back even farther,

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we find that both meanings

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derive from a common origin,

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where some of the earliest expressions

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of the concept of truth

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were associated with the uprightness of an oak,

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the steadiness of a silver birch,

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and the fidelity of an orchard baring fruit

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year after year.

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This may sound like a stretch at first,

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but trees are the oldest living organisms

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on this planet.

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Some that would have been called treow long ago

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still stand today.

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The Fortingall Yew in Scotland

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is more than 2,000 years old.

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A Californian Bristlecone Pine

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is more than 5,000.

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And Utah's Pando-quaking Aspen Grove

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has a single root system

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that dates back more than 80 millennia.

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Trees have also held a sacred place

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in many cultures throughout history.

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The Celtic peoples

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who first inhabited the British Isles

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believed that trees housed deities.

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And, in fact, the ancient Druids take their name

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from the same ancient root as tree.

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Planting a tree is itself an act of faith

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and commitment.

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Not only are trees upright and prototypically straight,

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but they are actual, solid, and real,

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something you can see and touch.

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And they are as reliable and steadfast to us today

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as they were a millennium ago,

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nurturing us,

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sheltering us,

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and providing the pages of our books.

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Philosophers and poets,

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people in search of the truth,

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have often sought it in trees.

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"What did the tree learn from the Earth

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to be able to talk with the sky?"

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asked Pablo Neruda.

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"A tree falls the way it leans,"

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says an old proverb.

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Just as trees mark our landscapes

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and witness our histories,

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the stories of words landscape our language,

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capturing the rains and sunshine of generations

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and sending roots and branches far and wide.

NOTE Paragraph

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As there is a whole orchard in a single seed,

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there is a whole story in a single word,

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and that's the truth.