Would you ever think that the English word “art” is related to the Armenian word for “iron”? For once,
art
and
artug
(արդուկ
“handheld implement to smooth clothes”) sound similar and have a relationship. In the same way,
artug
and
artarutiun
(արդարութիւն
“justice”) are also related.
You will probably ask in your most casual way: “Stop. Are you kidding me?”
No,
it is not a joke. As many times in the past, we go once and again to
the fact that both Armenian and English are Indo-European languages, and
thus, they share some common vocabulary, which may produce either
similar words with a similar meaning or, in this case, words with a
totally disparate meaning.
Of course, like so much English vocabulary, “art” derives from Old French
art
, and like so much French vocabulary, the source was a Latin word,
artem
(you may be familiar with the nominative form,
ars,
as in
ars nova
“new art”), meaning "work of art; practical skill; a business, craft.”
The Latin word itself stemmed from a Proto-Indo-European word, *
ar(ə)-ti
-, whose root was
*ar
(“to fit together”). To have a skill is to be able to fit something together, right?
The root for the Latin word was also the source for the Sanskrit word
rtih
(“manner, mode”) and the Greek
ártus
(“order”), among others. Among those “others” was the Armenian word
արդ
(Classical/Eastern Armenian
ard,
Western Armenian
art
),
with a wide collection of meanings: “manner, mode, order, form, done
work, production.” This Armenian term left a very prolific set of
derivations, both at the beginning and at the end of words (such as the
interesting compound word
խորանարդ
/ khoranart
“cube,” which literally means “that has the form (art
)
of an altar (khoran
)”).
After you wash a shirt, you need to give “form” and “order” to the clean, but yet wrinkled piece of cloth. You need an
artug
to do that.
What about
artarutiun?
This is even clearer. Justice is the way to make a decision about those
issues that have turned to be against established order. Therefore,
justice is called to establish “order.”
