I seem to be thinking a lot recently about words that can have two meanings.
Spell. Mind. Cry. Fast. Inclined. And today: try.
Before we got onto that though, let’s take a quick look at the related noun: trial. It’s not hard to see the similarities in meaning. If take a trial run at something, you’re just trying it, without any consequences. Also, try and trial are obviously related because they sound really similar.
But then think about how else we use the word: in legal terms. If you commit a crime, you might be put on trial. Or to put it slightly differently, you might be tried. This is a much more serious, negative meaning of to try and trial. And we can see this negative meaning in a more general way when we say that something is trying, or perhaps just trying our patience. Trial can also mean a difficult experience that tests one’s endurance.
There’s no obvious link between these uses of the words, and their more everyday meanings. It’s there though, just buried deep down in medieval France. The modern verb to try can be traced back to the Old French trier, meaning to pick out or cull. The link with the modern word is the idea of choosing from a selection to find the right person or thing you’re looking for. You try each one until you find who or what you’re looking for.
This came to be extended to the legal sense of deciding if someone is guilty or not by examining them, perhaps having to choose from a number of suspects. Even in the case of there being only one subject, the sense remains of choosing by examination. The more general sense of suffering a difficult experience comes from how difficult being tried in this manner must be. Especially if you’re innocent, which would be a trying experience indeed.
Fascinating how these can be either positive or negative associations that come from the same word. I’d never thought about it before. As a child, “try” was always a positive word – try the new foods – you won’t know whether you like them unless you do. But when people are trying my patience, as someone has this morning, it’s definitely not a good thing!!!
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Your post was interesting to read because I haven’t thought about how try is related to trial & both can be positive or negative depending on the situations. Also when someone says “I tried” I tend to view it negatively because it’s like the person tried something then gave up.
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That’s definitely true, especially with a certain intonation: “Well, I tried!”
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Interesting. I love your explorations into words. Also a try in rugby means a score, in French it is ‘essai’, which means the same I think. So you don’t score you only try??
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I’ve always found that very strange, especially as in other sports like soccer you say “attempt” to mean an effort to score..
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… which isn’t successful. Indeed. *shrugs at the absurdity of sport*
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Insert quotation from Yoda here.
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I can see where trier links to the word try. When I read cull / picked out I thought hmm… that makes sense. Always an education! thanks.
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