Though we may be divided by seas, by cultures, and by religion, the language of music is universal.
You may read the above sentence and wonder why I put “religion” in there. There’s a method to my madness.
When I looked up the A to Z Challenge word of the day in my thesaurus, I got “worldwide.” My initial thought was the Internet, naturally. But then I glanced at the synonyms and got a bit of a shock. The first one is “catholic.” How in the *ahem* heck, I thought, is “catholic” a synonym in the same list as “pandemic”? I immediately looked it up in the dictionary.
According to the English Oxford, it originates from the following:
“Late Middle English: from Old French catholique or late Latin catholicus, from Greek katholikos ‘universal’, from kata ‘in respect of’ + holos ‘whole’.”
It’s an adjective, defined as:
“Including a wide variety of things; all-embracing.”
For example, “‘her tastes are pretty catholic’”
Back to my original sentence. So by rights, I could get away with writing, “Though we may be divided by seas, by cultures, and by religion, the language of music is catholic.”
What do you think?
***
Hey, guess what? My A to Z Challenge-inspired novelette, “All Good Stories” is available internationally! It’s a romantic comedy about two best friends who belong together – Xavier knows it, but Jupiter has her eye on another guy: a shady character named Bob.
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April 30, 2017 at 3:52 am
Very interesting. Learn something new every day. Now I must incorporate “catholic” in my next story to throw everyone off.
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April 29, 2017 at 3:01 pm
I associate Catholic wholly with religion, although I realise it means all-encompassing too so it probably wouldn’t work for me. 🙂
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April 28, 2017 at 6:32 pm
“Catholic” does mean “universal,” and is used in the Apostles’ Creed, which most Christian denominations pray. A local Baptist church raised a fuss when they advertised on their marquee, “how to be catholic and still come to church here.” The sign was in all-caps, so everyone read it as “Catholic,” meaning a person of the Roman Catholic faith…
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April 28, 2017 at 3:49 am
As long as catholic is spelt with a lower case C, it’s fine. There’s a world of difference between the holy catholic church referred to in the Apostles’ Creed and the Roman Catholic church.
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April 28, 2017 at 9:32 am
This is true, Keith. The powers that be in all the institutions think of ‘catholic’ as everyone doing what they say. I remember as a kid praying for the conversion of Russia which I took as ‘make them all convert to the RCC’. I like Linda’s interpretation. 🙂
http://www.meinthmiddlewrites.com
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April 28, 2017 at 1:49 am
Hmmm.. Interesting take!
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April 27, 2017 at 10:55 pm
Seems like it should be pronounced “kathOlick” with that meaning! 😂
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