"Interpretation"

       Two posts ago, I felt I had to write about "hermeneutics," probably gratuitously, but being caught up in words has its hazards.

       Now I need to give you an insight about the word "interpretation," which I proclaimed as being probably the best single word synonymous with "hermeneutics."

       Actually the synyonymity (a word I doubt exists) between the two words makes perfect sense even if we are moving from Greek to Latin:  "Interpretation" means "taking between" by derivation--inter "between" and pret "take," the exact thing we expect a messenger (the messenger god Hermes) to do, take a message from here to there--"between."

       Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, I discovered years back that the earliest implications of the word "interpretation" were commercial, a sense that the interpreter was one who brought goods from here to there between people, sales.

       My profession centering on "oral interpretation of literature," being the conduit between literature and audiences, which I'd always thought far afield from my father's, a men's clothing business, had more in common with his than I would ever have imagined.