Instinct and Sticks, a Surprising Language Connection

Hello,

This week’s word is instinct, with thanks to the Teen Book Club at Academy Books. Only four more words to explore from their list and I’ll be back to my own inspirations. Don’t forget you can suggest a word for future Wordfoolery posts here. After 13 years of coming up with ideas for a weekly blog, suggestions are always welcome!

The forest is full of sticks and instincts

Instinct arrived in the English language in the early 1400s with a different meaning. I always find it surprising when words start out like this, and yet it is a frequent event. Instinct originally meant a prompting and it came from either the same word in Old French or possibly directly from Latin instinctus (impulse, inspiration).

The Latin word came from the verb instinguere (to incite or impel) which was formed by compounding in (into, in, upon) and stinguere (prick or goad). Stinguere itself came from an old root word steig (to prick, pierce, or stick).

Thus the idea of inciting somebody came from the idea of poking a creature with a stick to get it to move, perhaps in moving domesticated animals such as cattle or horses from one location to another. This transferred to prompting a person to take action, hopefully without the application of a stick or goad.

Instinct being a prompting gradually transformed during the next two hundred years of English usage into the meaning we have today. By the mid 1400s it was describing the “animal faculty of intuitive perception”, or in simpler terms, a gut instinct, a hunch, an idea you can’t explain but believe to be true.

By the mid 1500s, instinct had acquired the idea of being a natural tendency to behave in a particular way. Now we have two meanings for instinct. The formal scientific meaning of a “reaction to a stimulus without involving reason” and the less formal natural impulse or ability.

I suspect in this case the stimulus could still possibly be a stick, although I don’t recommend poking anybody or anything with a stick. It’s not fair and you never know what their instinctive reaction might be.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)