word of the day #1: bridelope

welcome!! this is my first day on spacehey, so in commemoration, i'm starting a new daily blog, with fun words and trivia!

today's word is bridelope (1150s—1500s), which is the earliest english word for marriage/wedding! bridelope, literally meaning "bridal run", is an old tradition where the bride was both symbolically and physically swept off on horseback to her husband's home by him and a helper, who was later known as the best man. isn't that fun?

another fun fact about weddings: the wedding ring is traditionally put on the left hand's ring finger because a myth from ancient egypt says that the left finger is the only one that has a vein connecting to the heart. it's called vena amoris, literally, the "vein of love". of course, now we know that all veins flow to the heart.

tacking onto this, why is it that we use the heart to represent love, anyways? greek philosophers like plato suggested that the heart was linked to our strongest emotions; not only positive emotions like love, but negative ones, like fear, rage, anger, or pain.

aristotle goes one step further, arguing that the heart was the center of all human thought processes. they didn't really have the medical knowledge that we do today, so these aren't exactly unusual for them. for example, in the middle ages, they believed that anger is stored in the spleen, thus the phrase "to vent one's spleen" was coined!

i posit that as our insight in human anatomy and physiology grew, these associations gradually faded away... except for love. that rush of excitement, the racing sensations of our heart in response to love never really elided. the association stayed! but i wonder if in the future this connection will fade, and love will no longer be seen as bound to the heart...

thanks for reading!!! i'll see you tomorrow :]

(psst. you can message me suggestions for the next wotd if you want to share some!!)