A Friend in West Virginia, Part Sixteen

My Clarksburg, West Virginia friend has said some nasty, demeaning things about other guys, and told me about how he had treated them. Like Trump, he seems to think there are no consequences for his behavior toward others. It seems there is no backtracking by him to even hint at any kind of apology. I'm sure he feels that is weakness, but saying, "I'm sorry," even if in a roundabout way, doesn't show weakness, it shows strength. It's not always something any of us can say easily. If we make a mistake, do we want to continue to hold onto that mistake, or do we want to correct it? If you're driving to Toledo, but you make a wrong turn, do you keep going, or do you make a correction? In our dealings with others, if we overreact in some negative way toward them, do we want to go to our graves holding onto errant beliefs and feelings? Do we say to ourselves, "I stayed the course, even though I was wrong and hurt others, I never gave in?" Or perhaps even worse, do the victims of your mistake go to their graves never hearing even a faint, "I made a mistake, I'm sorry."

WORD HISTORY:
Lip-This word goes back to Indo European, "leb," which had the notion, "to droop, to be slack." This gave its Old Germanic offspring, "lepjon," meaning, "lip." This then gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "lippa," which then became, "lippe," before the modern form. The other Germanic languages have: German "Lippe" and also, "Lefze" (used more for some animals, including dogs), Low German Saxon "Lipp," West Frisian "lippe," Dutch "lip," Danish "læbe," Norwegian "leppe," Swedish "läpp." I could not find a form in Icelandic. It "may be" that the Old Germanic form only lasted in the West Germanic languages, and that Danish, Norwegian and Swedish (all from the North Germanic branch of Germanic) borrowed their forms from Low German or maybe Frisian. That would account for the fact that there is no "apparent" form in Icelandic, nor could I find a form in Old Norse, essentially the ancestor of these North Germanic languages, with Icelandic being especially close to Old Norse, even still in modern times.