Ordinary Words 6: Peace

My blog about social interaction reminded me how much I love the word 'peace'.  This partially because peace and calm is something I have to strive to attain every day, and partially because it is a beautiful concept.  I think it's absolutely lovely how many cultures greet each other with some form of 'peace be with you'; it shows the fundamental value of peace to our mental, spiritual and social health.

There are two related meanings for 'peace':  military or political peace, as in the absence of war, and personal peace, defined in etymonline as 'freedom from disturbance by the passions'.  These two defintions evolved together in the mid-twelfth century.  The Anglo-Saxon pes and the Old French pais developed from the Latin pax, and replaced the Old English frið and sibb.  

By 1300, 'peace' could also mean both 'a state of quiet and tranquility' and the actual agreement that ended a war, ie a peace treaty. The 1530s saw the development of the term 'peace offering' in England, which may have been partly due to the very complex and specific culture of strategic gift giving in Tudor times. 

Many hundred years later, Peace became a hybrid tea rose (pictured above).  Developed in 1939, it was renamed after World War Two to celebrate the absence of war and the opportunity to develop an new, beautiful peace.

We still have some work to do on that, I think.