I often dig to the roots of words, as though down there I’ll learn both origin and truth. Comfort seeps in when I find a word’s ancient seed, and then see how far it’s grown or scattered. Now, thinking of patterns, I open the Oxford English Dictionary, look up pattern, and am surprised to see that it was a doublet of patron and thus born of pater: father. It seems odd that pattern, with its whiff of wallpaper and McCall’s, is kin to patronize. But a word’s history and an OED entry can be long. And looking an inch below patron, I reach matrix, an archaic sense of pattern. From mater: mother.
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