I caught a bogus etymology (or at least a bogus definition) in something I was reviewing. It was in a passage explicating the term "put on Christ" in Galatians 3:27. It said that the Greek word translated as "put on" is
enduo, which means "to endow." Then it added that it means to clothe oneself or to symbolically put something on.
But it doesn't mean "endow"; it means "clothe".
Endow means "give". This isn't the first time I've seen this connection between
enduo and
endow, so I did a little more digging and found
this article from BYU law professor John Welch. He conflates
endow,
endue, and
enduo in a very muddled explanation of the endowment ceremony. As far as I can tell, all three words are distinct, though I'm not sure if
endue and
enduo are really unrelated. They both mean "clothe", but one comes from Latin and the other from Greek.
Welch cites Noah Webster, who was a crap etymologist, but not a real etymological dictionary like the
OED, which would have clearly explained that
endow and
endue come from different roots but have been conflated to some degree for centuries. And then he cites Joseph Smith, who used
enduement and
endowment interchangeably in his writings. Uh, no offense, but Joseph Smith had only a third-grade education and was not exactly a great speller. It's not surprising that he confused two words that the
OED says were frequently confused.
I wonder how many people read that article by Welch and believed it all because he's a Mormon academic superstar who studied Latin and Greek, so obviously he
must know what he's talking about. Stuff like that really irritates me.
