Why Are Democrats Speaking to America in Ancient Greek?

As the Democratic Party mulls how to respond to the rhetoric emerging from the Republican National Convention this week, I dearly hope it does not continue to describe Donald Trump as a threat to democracy. That’s not because I disagree with that assessment or even because Trump just survived a horrifying attempt on his life. My complaint is not political, it’s linguistic: “Democracy” is an inert word.

It has a noble ring to it, but outside of a classroom or seminar, what does it mean, exactly? The problem goes back to the word’s origins. “Democracy” is built from Greek roots: The “demo” part means “people,” while the “cracy” part means “power.” That’s a vivid combination — if you know Ancient Greek.

If Democrats want voters to understand how Trump threatens this ideal, instead of saying it in Greek, it would be more effective to speak English. Referring to “the power of the people” or “people power” would get the reality across. Or, to get even more meat-and-potatoes direct, “Donald Trump will keep you from voting for what you want,” or “Donald Trump wants to take power away from the people and keep it for himself.”

I join a long line of writers who have worried that Latin and Greek words can make English harder to understand. Such plaints were especially the fashion in the 1500s and 1600s, when scholars of the classics brought a flood of foreign words into English, on the belief that they connected the relatively young language to humankind’s most sophisticated thoughts. Words like “rational,” “medicate,” “psychology” and … “democracy.”

The incursion offended some observers. In about 1560, the scholar and statesman John Cheke argued that “Our own tongue should be written clean and pure, unmixed and unmangled with borrowing of other tongues.” The poet Edmund Spenser, in his 1579 Shepheardes Calendar, deliberately elevated what he called “good and natural English words.” Judge Thomas Wilson complained in 1553 that “some seek so far for outlandish English that they forget altogether their mothers’ language. And I dare swear this, if some of their mothers were alive, they were not able to tell what they say.” Ralph Lever, a priest, proposed in 1573 that instead of the Latinate word “definition,” we should have the plain-spoken “saywhat” and that “reason,” derived from the Latin “ration,” should instead be “witcraft.”

Skepticism persisted into the 20th century. “Bad writers,” observed George Orwell, “and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like ‘expedite,’ ‘ameliorate,’ ‘predict,’ ‘extraneous,’ ‘deracinated,’ ‘clandestine,’ ‘subaqueous’ and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers.” Winston Churchill stressed native English words as fundamental to effective oratory, advising, “Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all.”