Thursday, August 20, 2020

"Victim"



Etymoline:

victim (n.)

late 15c., "living creature killed and offered as a sacrifice to a deity or supernatural power, or in the performance of a religious rite;" from Latin victima "sacrificial animal; person or animal killed as a sacrifice," a word of uncertain origin. Perhaps related to vicis "turn, occasion" (as in vicarious), if the notion is an "exchange" with the gods. Perhaps distantly connected to Old English wig "idol," Gothic weihs "holy," German weihen "consecrate" (compare Weihnachten "Christmas") on notion of "a consecrated animal."
Sense of "person who is hurt, tortured, or killed by another" is recorded from 1650s; meaning "person oppressed by some power or situation, person ruined or greatly injured or made to suffer in the pursuit of an object, or for the gratification of a passion or infatuation, or from disease or disaster" is from 1718. Weaker sense of "person taken advantage of, one who is cheated or duped" is recorded from 1781.
WordSense.EU
Wiktionary

U. Pitt Keywords Project:

Keyword: Victim

Victim is an important word because it links often traumatic personal or group experiences in contemporary societies to frameworks that understand such experiences and respond to them through public policy, political advocacy, and in wider public debate. The etymology of victim is straightforward: the word comes from Latin victima. Its first sense is that of a sacrificial offering, and this strong sense is made stronger by the identification of the sacrificial offering and thus the victim as Christ. By C17, however, it has developed the more general meaning “a person who is put to death or subjected to torture by another; one who suffers severely in body or property through cruel or oppressive treatment.” These strong meanings developed into a general sense of a passive recipient of misfortune. While in earlier uses such misfortune has been regarded as individual or random, there has been a concerted attempt in recent years to use the word as a route to political empowerment as the status of victim becomes structural. Governments have also chosen to endow victims with an active role in addressing their misfortune; this is most evident in some criminal justice systems, where the issue then arises of whether such victims have been given a power to override not only the rights of offenders but also the ability of the state itself to administer justice.

No comments: