Was Nike’s slogan anticipated 600 years ago?

SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days.

Nike made the three words “just do it” famous. It’s almost a philosophy of life wrapped up on eight letters.

That’s why something from an ancient poem called Secrets of Old Philosophers caught my eye.

Secrets of Old Philosophers was written around 1450 by a fellow named John Lydgate and he shared Nike’s philosophy in saying “Woord is but wynd; leff woord and tak the dede” (word is but wind, leave word and take the deed).

We could also paraphrase that by saying “actions speak louder than words” but although that proverb is just as true, for our purposes today it just isn’t quite as interesting since its less of a philosophy and more of a criticism.

Also it didn’t show up until almost 400 years after Lydgate was in his grave so let’s give our attention to the old philosopher.

When John Lydgate said “tak the dede” he was actually using a word deed that has very similar parentage to the word do in that Nike phrase.

Both of them go back to Old English and Germanic sources before ultimately coming together at an implied Indo-European root dhe or dho that meant “to place” or “to put.”

The two words do and deed are still pretty closely understood as in “to do a deed” and the definition of deed is “that which is done.”

I was asked about how deeds relate to real estate.

The iconic Perils of Pauline leaves me with an image of the damsel in distress tied to the railroad track unless she relinquishes the deed to some piece of property.

This use of the word deed appeared about 1300, a century before today’s hero John Lydgate. Then as now it meant a legal document proving ownership but the reason it’s called a deed is that somebody else owned it before.

The piece of paper showing that you own your house is called a deed because it documents the fact that whoever owned it before you did the deed of selling it to you; it’s a document of action.

This brings us back to John Lydgate who though a poet, was a man of action not just words. And it seems he had ever been thus because although destined for greatness as a monk he is reported in his biography to have been a “jester and a scoffer, who went to bed late and got up late [and] did not wash for dinner.”

He seems to have been an enthusiastic drinker too and complains of his home town that “Bachus licour” (by which he means wine) was in short supply.