Philology
/fɪˈlɒlədʒi/noun
The study of language through its written records and its history.
The Greek roots
Literally: “love of words”
The story of the word
In Athens φιλολογία meant a fondness for talk and argument, then learning in general, with no special connection to language. German scholarship in the nineteenth century narrowed it to the comparative study of old texts and tongues, and out of that work came the discovery that Greek, Sanskrit and German are relatives. Linguistics later took the living language, leaving philology the manuscripts, and the two fields have been negotiating the border ever since.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- late 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
Tolkien was a philologist first and a novelist by accident.
The dispute is one of philology: which manuscript reading came earlier.