The Word History of Social with Help from the Romans
Social is such an everyday word. We use it to describe people as being friendly and open to mixing with others. We use it as a noun to identify group events. It describes a variety of activities. Its roots, however, were less than friendly which is something I only stumbled across recently.
The adjective social entered English in the early 1400s to describe somebody or something as being connected to home life, so originally in English it was more about staying at home rather than going out and being a party animal. By the 1560s it acquired the idea of living with others, as an import from the French use of the word. This was probably closer to its roots as it came from Latin socialis (of companionship, allies, marriage, living with others).
Socialis came from socius, also in Latin, which means companion or ally, from a root word sekw (to folllow). This links to Old English secg and Old Norse seggr (companion).
With the passage of time social gained more uses, many of which are still active today. Social club arrived in the late 1700s – “persons coming together for friendly intercourse” (no sniggering down the back please). Social drinking was from the 1800s, as was a social butterfly (flitting from one event to another). In the 1900s we added social network and in 2008 we got social media.
There are more serious uses of social too – the social contract (1763 from Rousseau), social science (1785), and many uses around specific political theories. Ones which stuck out for me were social climbers trying to advance socially (1893), social security (state support for needy citizens in the USA since 1935), and you might recall social distancing as a virus transmission reduction concept during the recent pandemic but it started in 1924 with an entirely different meaning around psychological distance within societies.
None of this gives us much of a clue about the origin of the word social, however, except for the Latin word socius meaning companion or ally.
Social originates with a war. A war between socii (allies) to be precise. It took place from 90 to 87 B.C. between the Roman Republic and several of its allies and is known as the Social War. You can get the basics on Wikipedia, or a good Roman history textbook. As far as I can tell the allied states wanted to gain Roman citizenship and rights and the main body of Romans were not keen to share. The allies lost.
There is something contrary about a war being fought between allies and there’s something even more contrary about a word we use now for the joining together of people getting started by people fighting each other. There’s probably a sarcastic comment available here about social media, but I’ll let you find it yourself.
Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,
Grace (@Wordfoolery)
