The etymology of secrecy and openness (Part 2)

The first thing we will notice, here, is the l to r sound-change when we compare the English and Setswana versions of the term – otherwise they pronounce exactly the same. This sound-change is linguistically well-known and examples of it are numerous (we will encounter some in this article).

 The second thing to note is that it seems incongruous to associate ‘sly’ – which is understood to mean ‘clever, wily, ingenious’ – with ‘serai’ (dangerous)…but I noted that the Indo-European etymology of ‘sly’ emanates from the Scandinavian/Icelandic term slægur, which relates to the Afrikaans (i.e. Dutch) term sleg (dangerous). In turn, slæg (borrowed in Setswana as selaga) fundamentally connotes ‘a trap’ but has also come to mean ‘a device for slaughtering’ – which, effectively, is what a trap is. So, beforehand, a sly person was viewed as one who arranged cunning traps, mostly for slaughter, and was thus dangerous.