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Monday Morning Musings
Random thoughts, just my brain doing its thing
This quote was in my email this morning:
“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.” ~ Cornel West
Searching for justice (love) among this morning’s headlines. [sigh]
Some words, to me, sound like the opposite of what they mean. Words like bellicose: favoring or inclined to start quarrels or wars.
Since bellicose describes an attitude that hopes for actual war, the word is generally applied to nations and their leaders. In the 20th century, it was commonly used to describe such figures as Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm, Italy’s Benito Mussolini, and Japan’s General Tojo, leaders who believed their countries had everything to gain by starting wars. The international relations of a nation with a bellicose foreign policy tend to be stormy and difficult, and bellicosity usually makes the rest of the world very uneasy. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bellicose#h1
When I see a word that starts with “bel”, my mind goes to belle (French: beautiful) or bel paese (Italian: beautiful country). It makes no sense to me that a prefix like bel- would go on to form a word that refers to the ugliness of war.
