The Christian Science Monitor

The surprising vitality of one small word

Sisters Heather (r.) and Hannah Miedema stroll with their parasols during a Jane Austen character weekend on Aug. 12, 2017 in Hyde Park, Vermont.

In a 1395 translation of the Bible, God tells the prophet Ezekiel: “I shall bind that that was broken, and I shall make sad that that was sick” (Ezek. 34:16). Around the same time, Chaucer describes a beautiful woman as “debonair, good, glad and sad.” , these lines show, didn’t mean what it does now. 

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