October 22nd, 2008 Gennaro Brooks-Church
I heard somewhere that the word “anger” had interesting roots so I looked into it.
It turns out it is rooted in Old Norse or Indo-European language from the word angr, angh or ankh.
The Latin word “angina” also has its roots in this Indo-European word angh, angr, or ankh.
What does this word mean? It basically means to be “strangled”.
ENTRY: angh-
DEFINITION: Tight, painfully constricted, painful. Oldest form *anh-, becoming *angh- in centum languages.
Derivatives include anger, hangnail, and quinsy.
1. agnail, hangnail, from Old English ang-nægl, “painful spike (in the flesh),” corn, excrescence (nægl, spike; see nogh-), from Germanic *ang-, compressed, hard, painful. 2. Suffixed form *angh-os-. anger, from Old Norse angr, sorrow, grief, from Germanic *angaz. 3. Suffixed form *angh-os-ti-. angst1, from Old High German angust, anxiety, from Germanic *angusti-. 4. anxious, from Latin angere, to strangle, torment. 5. Suffixed form *angh-os-to-. anguish, from Latin angustus, narrow. 6. quinsy, from Greek ankhein, to squeeze, embrace. 7. angina, from Greek ankhon, a strangling. (Pokorny anh- 42.)
Why do I find this interesting?
Anger is the result of being strangled, or the other way around. It doesn’t matter. I take that very literally. Our body is lacking air.
WE MUST BREATHE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lack of breathing is the root of anger. Feeling angry? It is a sign you are not breathing.
Here is some text that is very interesting from a site about medical derivatives of words. Bottom line, not breathing and thus not providing enough air to the blood, causes heart attacks. It may take a while but sooner or later that is what happens. Along the way you spend a lot of time angry. Here is the text:
angina Latin, a choking pain + pectoris Latin, of the chest
Angina pectoris is excruciating pain starting in the left chest and shooting down the left arm and sometimes into the neck, caused by low oxygen supply to the muscles of the heart. Two small branches of the aorta called the coronary arteries supply oxygenated blood to heart muscles.
The Root *ankh
Other English words and foreign terms contain the same basic root as the word angina, namely the ancient Indo-European root *ankh ‘narrow, constricted.’
Anger was originally felt to be a narrow, tight, choking rage.
Anguish is constrictive distress of slighter force than anger.
To angle is to fish with a hook. An angler is such a fisherman. Both words have the Old English or Anglo-Saxon root angul meaning a fish hook or a thing bent and narrowed.
Anglo-Saxon recalls the Angles, Germanic invaders of Britain from a narrow angle of land between peninsular Denmark and the European mainland. Angle-land evolved into the modern English word England. And Ænglisc, originally a term for the Angles’ dialect, became the word English.
Angostura bitters is a digestive tonic made from the bark of a Venezuelan tree. Both tree and tonic are named after the Venezuelan town of Angostura, which in Spanish means ‘the narrows of a river.’
Ankle, where the leg is slender or narrow, and the joint where the foot hooks to the leg, where the foot forms an angle with the leg, comes from Old English ancleow which has the same *ankh root.