Farsi of the day

"Shakanj."

I chose this for a sort of complicated reason, that reaches clear back to Shippey's biography of Tolkien which I read several years ago. In that, he discusses the etymology of Tolkien's ringwraiths. They come from the same Old English root, "wreothan" (spelling?), as "writhe" and "wreath" and "wroth." There's also some connotation of mist or smoke, of partial earthliness and partial unearthliness; also of riding. (Hence the ringwraiths are also Black Riders.) But these writhen words all share some concept of misery and twisting.

Which brings me to "shekanj." It means "bend, twist, wrinkle." And the presumably related word "shekanjeh" means "torture, rack."

I thought it was fascinating that there was a parallel concept in the English and the Farsi. It fits in splendidly with Augustine's principle that evil is only a twisting of good, and it also works with Lewis's Bent Ones from the Space Trilogy. It's possible Indo-European strikes again; or, as someone sensible pointed out, it's nice when reality and grammar and Augustine all line up. :-)