What is marriage?
Marriage is the union of man and wife.
You may or may not know that the first American dictionary was Noah Webster's, in 1828. Webster described marriage this way:
You may or may not know that the first American dictionary was Noah Webster's, in 1828. Webster described marriage this way:
MAR'RIAGE, n. [L.mas, maris.] The act of uniting a man and woman for life; wedlock; the legal union of a man and woman for life. Marriage is a contract both civil and religious, by which the parties engage to live together in mutual affection and fidelity, till death shall separate them. Marriage was instituted by God himself for the purpose of preventing the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, for promoting domestic felicity, and for securing the maintenance and education of children. |
Webster had a genius for putting to ink the obvious. Americans in those days bore in mind self-evident truth—concepts like "all men are created equal," "endowed by their Creator," "unalienable rights," "holy matrimony." So when Webster devoted a paragraph to marriage, he sketched the clearest picture discernible. He saw marriage as vital to the rearing of children. He also noticed "domestic felicity," which sounds a lot like the "domestic tranquility" intended by the United States Constitution. As a wordsmith, Webster kept a close eye on law, ancient etymologies, and the Bible. Authority had to be drawn from somewhere. You can't just make things up. Webster was committed to representing the truth. He knew that no one has the right to simply redefine a word, not even the author of the dictionary.
So it was that Webster stuck to the self-evident understanding of marriage.
But Webster also dug into the etymology, to find two Latin roots: mas and maris. Latin, as with many of the languages it influenced, contains masculine and feminine inferences. As it happens, mas and maris are masculine—in fact, they are the very definition of male. Did you notice? The word mas is the prefix for "masculine"!
Webster was indeed on to something, even in 1828, before the information superhighway came along to do a lifetime of research in seconds.
In our underappreciated times, a person can travel the internet to a pretty close proximity to the truth. (Google's boulders in the road notwithstanding.) So as we search for the word maris, we find it used interchangeably with mas, but more specifically for husband. The French say maris et femmes for "husbands and wives."
But here's where it gets a little bit confusing. In Latin, maris is a singular word. In French, it is les maris in the plural, and les mari in the singular.
Nonetheless, maris specifically refers to a husband, and it jumps off the page as an obvious root for marriage. Therefore, we can confidently say that "marriage," true to the word, must involve a husband. You can't have a marriage without one.
Here we discover an inescapable truth, and a very unfortunate one for word hijackers: marriage requires a male.
By definition! To take the male out of marriage leaves you with nothing but -riage. That looks like rage! Perhaps rage is all that's left for persons who are wedded to a fiction of the mind.
But here we jest. Do you see what we did there? We cannot make "raige" into "rage," just because it's cute in our etymological exercise. Words cannot be coaxed into the wrong box, even if our desires tell to to try fitting a giraffe into a dog crate. You have to go with reality, or sanity is no longer your friend.
Let's be real. Female/female relationships cannot be called a marriage. It's a linguistic absurdity. It's the ox in the oxymoron.
The hijackers might think, "Point taken. The word 'marriage' requires a male. So we'll just say marriage can be male/male." But here again comes the reality semi-truck aimed at an air-filled bubble. Hint: the bubble has no chance.
How can we be sure? Just look at that word marriage, and think. It isn't mar-mar, maris-maris, male-male. It's singular: the word marriage allows only one husband, who is also required for the word to exist.
Good old Noah Webster had it right: marriage is the legal union of a man and a woman.
So it was that Webster stuck to the self-evident understanding of marriage.
But Webster also dug into the etymology, to find two Latin roots: mas and maris. Latin, as with many of the languages it influenced, contains masculine and feminine inferences. As it happens, mas and maris are masculine—in fact, they are the very definition of male. Did you notice? The word mas is the prefix for "masculine"!
Webster was indeed on to something, even in 1828, before the information superhighway came along to do a lifetime of research in seconds.
In our underappreciated times, a person can travel the internet to a pretty close proximity to the truth. (Google's boulders in the road notwithstanding.) So as we search for the word maris, we find it used interchangeably with mas, but more specifically for husband. The French say maris et femmes for "husbands and wives."
But here's where it gets a little bit confusing. In Latin, maris is a singular word. In French, it is les maris in the plural, and les mari in the singular.
Nonetheless, maris specifically refers to a husband, and it jumps off the page as an obvious root for marriage. Therefore, we can confidently say that "marriage," true to the word, must involve a husband. You can't have a marriage without one.
Here we discover an inescapable truth, and a very unfortunate one for word hijackers: marriage requires a male.
By definition! To take the male out of marriage leaves you with nothing but -riage. That looks like rage! Perhaps rage is all that's left for persons who are wedded to a fiction of the mind.
But here we jest. Do you see what we did there? We cannot make "raige" into "rage," just because it's cute in our etymological exercise. Words cannot be coaxed into the wrong box, even if our desires tell to to try fitting a giraffe into a dog crate. You have to go with reality, or sanity is no longer your friend.
Let's be real. Female/female relationships cannot be called a marriage. It's a linguistic absurdity. It's the ox in the oxymoron.
The hijackers might think, "Point taken. The word 'marriage' requires a male. So we'll just say marriage can be male/male." But here again comes the reality semi-truck aimed at an air-filled bubble. Hint: the bubble has no chance.
How can we be sure? Just look at that word marriage, and think. It isn't mar-mar, maris-maris, male-male. It's singular: the word marriage allows only one husband, who is also required for the word to exist.
Good old Noah Webster had it right: marriage is the legal union of a man and a woman.
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