Wondrous Words Wednesday
My word this week is apostatised. I found it in Color Me English by Caryl Phillips in the essay titled “Shusaku Endo: Confessions of a True Believer.” It’s on page 210, describing the novel Silence by Japanese author, Shusaku Endo:
The novel centres on Rodrigues, a young Jesuit evangelist who travels to seventeenth-century Japan from Portugal in order to discover why his mentor has apostatised rather than suffer martyrdom. p. 210
According to Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, apostatize (I’m guessing the version without the z is a British spelling) means to commit apostasy. The definition of apostasy that seems to fit is “renunciation of a religious faith.” Later in the story of the Silence, the young Jesuit finds himself also going against his own beliefs, trampling an image of Christ in order to prevent Japanese converts from being tortured. According to Phillips, the missionary “decided that, in this instance, martyrdom would be unacceptably selfish.”
Edited to add: Commenters are curious about any relation to the word apostle, so I accessed the on-line Oxford English Dictionary through my library. It looks like they aren’t as similar as they seem. Both Greek words, but apostle comes from a word meaning messenger and apostasy from a word meaning withdraw. At least, that’s how I’m interpreting it. If anyone is good with Greek, I’d love to get someone else’s opinion.
Wondrous Words Wednesday is hosted by Bermudaonion’s Weblog. Kathy says: “Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our reading.”
Weren’t the disciples known as apostles? That word seems to have derived from apostle but have the opposite meaning. How interesting!
Very interesting when related to the word apostle.
http://tributebooksmama.blogspot.com/2012/05/wondrous-words-wednesday_16.html
Hi Joy,
I shall be quite happy to go along with your interpretation of the definition, as my knowledge of Greek and for that matter religion, is very limited.
There are many words which we English spell with an ‘s’, rather than the ‘z’ which American English uses, although we do tend to lapse and use the ‘z’ on occasion.
Thanks so much for an interesting post,
Yvonne
I think I may have it!
Apostasy is to STAND away from – to separate yourself from the church.
Apostle is one who is SENT away from (to go out and tell the good news).
That is what I was able to find anyway – I am not a Greek scholar – LOL!
That sounds good to me!
Quite an interesting word. I would have thought it was linked to apostle too!
You always find such intriguing words. I didn’t know this one either, whether spelt with an s or a z.
Joy, my son was a spelling bee kid who went to nationals twice and then went on to participate twice in the shortlived National Vocabulary Championship. We lived and breathed word roots for several years around here. Takes me back.