Today’s podictionary word brought to you by GoToMeeting. Try it free for 30 days by following the link www.gotomeeting.com/podcast

Here’s a quote:

“If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”

That was said by Edward Morgan Forster, the author of A Passage to India.

I’ve been looking at some of his biographical material and the quote seems to match his reputation; he distrusted “the establishment” but instead trusted individuals.

He was gay and living in the early 1900s and so the prospect of betraying a friend was probably more real to him than it is to you and me.

The word betray appeared in English more than 700 years ago from French and in turn from Latin.  The Latin root was tradere the “be” prefix being added in English as an intensifier.

The Latin word in turn broke into two, trans dare literally “across give” meaning to “hand over” or to “deliver.”

Having stripped the “be” off the front of betray it is much easier to see its relationship to the word traitor.

Betraying people and countries and becoming a traitor are certainly things we frown on.  But there is a related word that we actively support.  That Latin tradere is also the root of tradition, although ironically tradition doesn’t have as long a tradition in English as betray or traitor.

One who betrays his country is accused of treason, which also comes from the same root.

Often you hear of this skullduggery referred to as high treason.  Historically there was petty treason as an alternative to high treason.

What E M Forster was hoping to have the courage for was high treason over petty treason since petty treason was betrayal of an individual, while high treason was betrayal of the state or the monarch.

These were actual laws running back to the 1300s.

Kind Edward III defined High Treason to include among other things:

• sleeping with his wife;
• sleeping with his eldest daughter;
• imagining either the king or his eldest son dead.

I guess committing these crimes against the younger kids was only petty treason.