Big sky, small copse
Impressively, I am back to my full length runs. Oh yes, go, Crone, go! See her stumble! See her plod! See her overtake a snail and slug!
Even more impressively, having done the run, passing the copse, I returned to the car, collected my camera and coffee and set off for it once again. At a walk. So, probably rather more speedily than when "running".
I sat by the big Copse Oak, who is hollowing out more and more. What I sensed, as the huge farm machine sprayed the arable land around me, was "life going on despite".
Despite. In spite of. But not "in spite". Interesting, isn't it?
Thanks to ChatGPT....
The little family tree
despite and spite are historically the same word.
Middle English despit came from Old French despit, from Latin despectus, “a looking down on, contempt, scorn,” from despicere: to look down upon. The de- is “down” and the root behind spicere/specere is “to look.”
Then something rather lovely happened.
despit → spite
That is a process called aphesis: the loss of an initial unstressed sound. So spite is not merely vaguely related to despite; it is historically a shortened form of it.
And in spite of originally meant something like:
in defiance of / in contempt of / in the face of
It is recorded from around 1400. So:
I went in spite of the rain
originally carries something like:
I went in defiance of the rain.
Over time the hostile or defiant quality was bleached out, leaving the concessive sense we have now: notwithstanding; despite; even though.
And despite itself became the shortened grammatical form of the older in despite of.
But now look at what has happened semantically.
“In spite of” still contains a tiny act of resistance
We say:
I am sad in spite of accepting it.
Or:
I continue living in spite of the sadness.
And the phrase quietly holds two things together:
the thing that is thereandthe continuation that happens anyway.
Not because the thing has gone away.
Not because I have transcended it.
In spite of it.
And then there is “spite”
The original spite is defiance, contempt, hostility.
So there is an almost fossilised movement inside the modern phrase:
in spite of X
once meant:
in defiance of X.
And that means in spite of retains, buried inside its ordinary grammatical life, a tiny history of refusal.
And there is an even stranger etymological resonance.
Because despectus / despicere — the ancestor of despite — literally carries the sense of looking down.
So despite has this buried verticality:
de-downlook down
And yet its modern grammatical function is almost the opposite of being “above” something.
Despite the thing means:
I don't deny the thing. I proceed with the thing there.
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