Article

A word about the word for word(ing)

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Abstract

Akkadian amatu A/awātu has long been conventionally translated as “word”. It is well recognized that the term often carried a range of meanings well beyond this simple nominalization, parallel to uses in English/French/German for “word,” “mot,” or “Wort”, as, e.g., “command,” “message,” “news,” or “oath”. The scarcity of amatu’s meaning in Akkadian as “word” (i.e., a lexical item) has rarely been noted as such. But the substantial exclusion of amatu’s meaning as “word” is only the secondary point of this contribution. The more important implication is that the semantic focus of amatu was on wording, with superior attention to the sense and style of communicative acts in Akkadian, especially in oral and rhetorical contexts. Re-examining the miliuex in which amatu appears as “wording” should lead us to concentrate more on the aesthetic and social criteria for beautiful or acceptable speech (and opposites) and the further implications for how it was evaluated in private, political, and juridical settings.

How to Cite:

Richardson, S., (2025) “A word about the word for word(ing)”, Akkadica 146(1), 1-8. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/akkadica.100523