-Ship

The day before yesterday, I was pondering the word relationship. It is interesting because relation by itself makes sense, and somehow when you add 'ship' at the end it becomes something more solid. Then I started thinking of other words, like friendship.

When you think about it, there are a lot of words that end with 'ship'. Craftsmanship. Courtship. Statesmanship. Lordship. And none of them are directly related to a vessel that goes on the sea - except, perhaps, seamanship.

These things trouble me.

Where does 'ship' fall into English and plant itself at the back of words? Puzzling. So I checked out the Online Etymology Dictionary since such things bother me. I like to know where words came from, because words have a culture of their own... and I was somewhat surprised at the results for the suffix -ship: 'state, condition of being' (interesting roots)

With my own personal philosophy and the situation that brought all of this on, I found this all very... right. It reminded me of Erich Fromm's To Have Or To Be, one of the few books I found of worth in the mazes of formal education (and a German's interpretation of Eastern philosophy, in my opinion).

We are all -ships. We all have -ships. And some -ships change - for better or worse - but they remain -ships.