Thailand... A Win For Humanity!

The rescue of 12 boys and their soccer coach from a cave in Thailand is a highly visible win for humanity, but there are other wins EVERY DAY, performed by any number of people, although we may not hear much about them. The nastiness of the few makes the news, and at times, it may make things seem that the world is crumbling, but there are still MANY good people, people who put themselves in danger for others, with some suffering injury or even death in their efforts to do good. The need for such efforts is never ending, so while this is a moment to cheer for the task just accomplished, goodness cannot take a bow for long, as there are so many other challenges to be overcome in all parts of the world.

WORD HISTORY:
Cave-This word, closely related to "cavity," a word of Latin derivation borrowed by English, goes back to Indo European "keuh," which had the notion "to swell, to grow larger;" thus also, "to hollow out, to make deeper." This gave Latin the adjective "cavus," which meant, "hollow" ("hollowed out"). This then provided Latin with the noun "cavea" (a hollow). This gave Latin-based French with "cave," which meant, "underground chamber, cellar." English borrowed the word "seemingly" in the first half of the 1200s, but quickly developed the meaning, "underground hollow, underground room." Whether this meaning was influenced by Spanish "cueva," which meant "cave, underground den," is unknown to me, but it is certainly possible, and perhaps even likely, given that Spanish was spoken along the then southern colonial border regions in Florida and Texas. In spite of the similarity, it is not related to English "cove," an original English word from its Germanic roots. The verb form of "cave" developed in the early 1400s, initially as "caven," and meaning, "to hollow out," but by circa 1700, the meaning, "to fall in, to collapse," "seemingly" developed in the American colonies from the idea of the "a collapse forms a hollow."