Mausoleum of Halicarnassus

As humans we possess an enormous amount of unacquainted ignorance when it comes to the knowledge and history behind common everyday words and sayings. The honest truth is that it’s easier to have a mindset such as this when thinking of the words we use daily. A great deal of knowledge can be discovered by looking into the etymology of words. For instance in the previous three sentences, I don’t know the origin behind why any word means what it does but I used them anyways. The enormous amount of hidden knowledge within a series of words is easy to see when looked at in this approach. Take for example the word Assassin which is defined by Webster as “One who murders by surprise attack, especially one who carries out a plot to kill a prominent person” (Marriam Webster). The word originated during the time of the Crusades. Members of a secret Muslim sect engaged others in order to terrorize their Christian enemies by performing murders as a religious duty. These acts were carried out under the influence of hashish, and so the killers became known as hashshashin, meaning eaters or smokers of hashish. Hashshashin evolved into the word assassin (Harper, 2010). Every word has an etymology behind it and many of which date back hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Before having my paper topic assigned to me I was exactly like most humans and never thought about the origins of a word. A mausoleum as defined by Webster is “a large burial chamber, usually above ground” (Marriam Webster). I have known the definition of what a mausoleum is since elementary school but not until recently did I know how it came to be called as it is. Now, after doing significant research into my topic, I know that mausoleum evolved from the Tomb of Mausolus built in 350 BC. The tomb was so magnificent that word of its grandeur spread throughout the ancient world and it became denoted as the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (Fergusson, 1862). The mausoleum is arguably one of the first and greatest

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