But our nouns betray us, offering a false sense of stable
meanings. Take the word "states" from the previous sentence.
Conventionally, a state is seen as a distinguishable condition or a
political entity and to state is to declare clearly. But if we track its
etymological sources, we find that state derives from the Latin word, stare: to stand, and Greek states: one that takes a stand, a standing. So, state has its origin in a sign for the body's active positioning in space and to state is to take a verbal stand. But it doesn't end there. State derives from an Indo-European root, sta- which leads us to stage, stanza, stance, stable, stallion, stud, store, restore.
The suffix -ant is related, as it is used in
constant, resistant, extant, as well as substance, understand, ie. to
stand under, and there are strong linkages to statistics, statue,
stature, status, and statutory, and their cousins,
destitute, prostitute, constitute, institute.
The political state draws on the Persian stan, which brings us Pakistan, Afghanistan etc. These words have a relation to an ancient image of a post or stake stuck in the ground--something not unlike the WTC-- and are related to the Sanskrit word, Theravada from sthavra meaning stout, thick. In this same constellation we have steer, and surprisingly the Greek word, histos, meaning web and Latin sistere, to set up, to stop, place or stand, which brings us also to apostacy, epistemology, episteme, ecstacy, hypostasis, and system.
So, if we take all of this histos, this rhizomic web of roots and links, we find ourselves constant-ly osc-oscillating from denotation to connotation to connotation. The original word, state,
which seemed at first so simple and clear, itself implying stability
and clarity, progressively devolves into ambiguity, destabilised
by a vast ecstatic proliferation of associative meanings. A state of affairs becomes a multiplicity of turnings. A stable state is an epistem-ological web that performs these turns.