This week, we discuss several ‘proto-terms’ that describe and define ‘heaps’ and ‘curves’. Starting off with the proto-term ‘hub’ we find that the dictionary defines it is as ‘the central part [of something]’ but admits not knowing its etymology – thus, it queries, “[it is] “a variation of ‘hob’?” Looking up ‘hob’ we find that it is a ‘projection/protrusion’ of sorts, or a ‘round peg’, but, etymologically, with the query “a variation of ‘hub’?” Let Setswana help out with this. ‘Hub’ takes its sense of ‘central’ from mo-hubu (belly button) which is centrally located on the front of the body. But its main sense relates to the many cases where the belly button is herniated and thus protrudes. This sense of ‘standing out’ gave rise to the term ‘hubris’ (excessive pride). To create variation out of a proto-term, language often changes pronunciation slightly for the same basic phonology. Thus, for huba and ‘hubris’, the u is pronounced as ‘ooh’ but in the case of ‘hub’ it changes to ‘ah’. ‘Ah’ is evident in the English term ‘tub’ and ‘tubby’ which relate to someone who is fat, pot-bellied and short. We can relate ‘tub’ to ‘thaba’ (mound, hill) which, of course, looks like an inverted pot.Now, although taba (pronounced with a hard t) retains the sense of ‘heap, mound’ its semantic shift is now ‘heap [of issues]’ as in news, weight matters, and gossip. Jesus was named Msiha k’daba by the Mandean Essenes and this was wrongly translated as “False Messiah”. But that was not what it meant. “Mo sia ka taba” means “He who left us with [a heap of] issues” as Jesus certainly did after his crucifixion. His Essene brothers of Qumran were raided and massacred leaving only enough time for them to hide some of the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ – the apocryphal gnostic material they were being persecuted for.
Linguistically, ko-huba (‘to curve [one’s hands]’) became kopa (to cup one’s hand to beg or to ask to be given something) which, quite evidently, became ‘cup’ in English. This ‘
