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Ownership and Ethics

published by Taran Rampersad on Wed, 01/12/2011 - 10:52

As I rolled around last night trying to get comfortable despite my body's rejection of a virus, the word 'naughty' came to mind. And I thought, 'did they really slap a y at the end of naught?'. Up now, I did a search and found out that this is almost exactly what they did.

naughty: late 14c., naugti "needy, having nothing," from O.E. nawiht (see naught) + -y (2). Sense of "wicked, evil, morally wrong" is attested from 1520s. The more tame main modern sense of "disobedient" (especially of children) is attested from 1630s. A woman of bad character c.1530-1750 might be called a naughty pack.

So what is now used as a reference to poor ethics really came from not owning. Not being a person 'of means'. Thus people who had nothing were considered to be less than ethical by their lack of ownership? Maybe I read too much into it.

Even so, in the present world economy, I see lots of naught-y people. And I see a few naughty people in the same context. Go figure.

Perspective
Etymology
Life

Comments

Submitted by unprose on Mon, 01/17/2011 - 21:08.

You may have stumbled into something here. Of course those without means were considered inferior in the 14th and 15th centuries. They were considered dirty and carriers of vermin, unfit persons with whom one of means did not associate. (Never mind that those with means never considered aiding those without; never mind that serfs and other such "naught-y" ones worked for those well off and had no time or funds to educate their children in basics, much less in the contrived manners of the day - part of their "naught-y-ness" caused by circumstance.)

These days, when one drives through a neighborhood that houses those at or below the poverty level, one makes sure all his car door buttons are down, his doors locked against the "naught-y" ones who live there. Even if he parks his car in the parking lot of a building that houses the old and infirm, the disabled and the retired veteran, he makes sure his car's alarm is activated. After all, they have naught - making them "naught-y" - and are not fit company for the person of means, and they surely are jealous of his things and want those things for themselves. And, as it was those centuries ago, those with means, by labeling those with no means, find it easy to view them with contempt rather than offer any assistance to them, to bestow upon those "naught-y" ones the means of bettering themselves.

That's why we've always had an "elite" class and a "lower class. How the middle class got into the mix is a mystery to me, unless that group of people is comprised of those who see, but choose not to get involved, lest they lose their affiliation with either extreme.

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