How a carpenter’s square, the tool that “knows” a right angle, gave us norms, normal life and even enormous. Tap ▶ to hear each step read aloud.
Proto-Indo-European *ǵneh₃- meant to know. It gave English know, Latin (g)nōscere (French connaître), and Greek gignṓskein, to know.
In Greek, a gnṓmōn was “one who knows”: something that shows you the right answer. It was the name of the pointer of a sundial, which knows the time, and of the carpenter’s square, which knows the right angle.
The Romans had a word norma for the carpenter’s square. It probably came from Greek gnṓmōn, perhaps through Etruscan, which lost the first sound.
From norma came Latin normālis, made with the square, at right angles. In mathematics, a normal line is still one at right angles to a surface.
A square is the standard you measure against. So a norm became a rule or standard, and in the 1800s normal came to mean following the rule.
French École normale was a school that set the standard for teachers.
Today normal means usual, ordinary, as expected.
Examples: a normal day
, back to normal
, the new normal
, and abnormal for strange.
And enormous? Latin ē-norma: outside the square, far beyond the norm!
| norm | a rule, a standard |
| abnormal | not normal |
| enormous | “out of the square”: huge |
| know, recognise | from the same root *ǵneh₃- |
Norme, normal, énorme and connaître all belong to this family.
“Normal is what fits the carpenter’s square, enormous is what doesn’t.”