Friday, May 15, 2009

Etymological Origin of the English Language Term "System" viz. Systems is Found in Older Indo-European Terms such as Latvian Saistam

"System" and its plural "systems" are among the most frequent words used in the English language. Google gives us 1,410,000,000 hits for the word the singular "system" and 636,000,000 hits for the plural "systems".

Wikipedia
writes: "System (from Latin systēma, in turn from Greek σύστημα systēma) is a set of interacting or interdependent entities, real or abstract, forming an integrated whole."

A connected Indo-European term is e.g. Latvian saist- "to tie together" whence Latvian saistījums "connection", showing that the ancient origin of the term system is in the idea of "connections". Mēs saistam in Latvian means "we connect".