Puck

essay by Brian Charles Clark

What does a debutante mean when she says, “Simply sublime, dahling”? And what does that have to do with subliminal messages? Why does “sublime” mean “elevated,” while “subliminal” implies “beneath”? “Sub” means “under, below, beneath, down” [AHD]. To “sub lime” should mean “to sit beneath the shade of a citrus tree.” That, of course, would be wrong—unless you’re a punster.

It turns out that sublime and subliminal both have to do with the “lintel,” Latin limen. The lintel is the beam that forms the upper part of a window or door, and supports part of the structure above it [AHD]. This lintel is thus a threshold; we get the word “limen” to mean the “threshold of a physiological or psychological response” [AHD]. “Sub” + “limen” gives us, in various forms, words that mean passing under, through, and over a metaphorical threshold. (Note: The threshold metaphor is, clearly, I think, part of a much more encompassing metaphor that views “knowledge as a structure,” which lends support to the idea that human “ways of knowing” can be described as an architectonics of epistemology. Architecture and architectonic both stem from the Proto Indo-European root *tek [AHD], from which we also get “text” and “textile.” As I’ve begun to show elsewhere, there is a metaphorical relationship between writing and weaving at the level of “to do work.” I’ve also been investigating the role of mimesis in the formation of these Lakoff-Johnsonian metaphors. In the wake of reading Ruhlen, I’m beginning to wonder if there might not be some proto-metaphor “to make like” or “to do as” that early humans employed to mark off their activities as somehow “above the threshold” of the non-human world.) Continue Reading »