A Voice or a Vessel?

IThe hook

• A voice and a vessel differ by one letter, and the letter is the same. Latin vōx is a voice and vās is a vessel; the ear hears V-S in both. Which came first — the voice, or the vessel that carries it?
• Vāc, the goddess of speech in the Rigveda (10.125, the hymn in which speech herself speaks: “I move with the Rudras, with the Vasus…”). Al-Wāsiʿ, the All-Embracing, one of the ninety-nine names — the vessel wide enough to hold everything. And the Throne verse, Qur’an 2:255: wasiʿa kursiyyuhu s-samāwāti wa-l-arḍ, “His seat encompasses the heavens and the earth.”
• The season’s own thread: this root is the ves that begins vessel, and the next two episodes take the two halves of that word — W-S, one setting softer, and S-L, the sel at the end.

IIThe sound

• V is the lower lip laid against the teeth with the voice on; S is the hiss. The breath contained at the lips and then let go through the teeth: what holds, and what pours out. Rule III.
• The trades: V ~ W ~ B at the lips (Rule IV — vinum · wine; Wien · Vienna; walī · valī), so V-S is also W-S and B-S; and S ~ Z ~ SH at the teeth. The Throat: lips and teeth again, the two front stations.

IIIThe voice

• Latin vōx, vocāre: vocal, vocation (the calling), vowel (vocalis, the letter with voice), invoke, provoke, evoke, revoke, advocate, vouch, avow, vociferous, convoke. Proto-Indo-European *wekʷ-, to speak: Sanskrit vāc, vacas (word), vaktra (mouth); Greek epos (the word — epic), ops (voice); Avestan vāxš; Old Prussian wackis, a cry.
• Sanskrit Vāc: the goddess; Vāk-devī; the Vedic idea that speech is the vessel of the sacrifice.
• Hebrew and Arabic by sound: Arabic waṣiyya, the testament — the last thing spoken; waṣī, the one appointed by it (ʿAlī as waṣī); waʿẓ, the sermon — the voice that admonishes; wasm, the mark — and the Kufan grammarians’ derivation of ism, the name, from it.

IVThe vessel

• Latin vās, vāscellum: vase, vessel, vascular — the blood vessel, the ship, the vase, all one word. Vastus: vast, waste, devastate — the wide empty holder. Vestis, the garment — vest, vestment, invest, divest: the vessel of the body. Vesta, the hearth — the vessel of the fire. Vesper, the evening, and west, where the vessel of the day closes.
• Arabic w-s-ʿ: wasiʿa, to be wide, to encompass; wāsiʿ, wide; al-Wāsiʿ; saʿa, capacity; wusʿ, what one can hold — Qur’an 2:286, “God does not burden a soul beyond its wusʿ.” w-s-ṭ: wasaṭ, the middle; ummatan wasaṭan, “a middle nation” (2:143); and English waist, the middle of the body. w-s-l: waṣala, to arrive, to connect; wuṣūl, arrival; wasīla, the means, the vessel of approach (5:35). w-ṣ-y: waṣiyya, the bequest.
• Sanskrit vas, to dwell: vāsa, the dwelling; vastu, the thing, the site — Vāstu shāstra, the science of the dwelling; vasu, wealth, the good — the Vasus, eight gods of the elements; Vāsudeva. The vessel as the house.
• English: vessel, vast, vase, vest, waist, west, vesper, Wessex (the west Saxons), wassail (kept for the next episode).

VThe same and the opposite

• Rule VI. Vast is the grand and waste is the empty — one Latin word, vastus. The vessel is what holds and the voice is what escapes it. Wāsiʿ is the wide and wasaṭ is the middle — the widest thing and the centre of it. Invest puts in; divest takes out. Vocation calls you in; provocation calls you out.
• The physician’s note: the vessel is the blood vessel, and the voice is a column of air pushed through a vessel — the larynx is a vessel that speaks. The body answers the question in the title: the vessel came first, and the voice is what it does.

VINames remember

• Al-Wāsiʿ. Wasīm, handsome — w-s-m, the marked one. Wāṣil, the one who arrives; Wāṣif, the describer — the voice. Vāsudeva. Vasco, Vásquez — the Basque, vascus, and the Basques call themselves Euskaldunak, the speakers of the tongue: a people named for its voice. Vesta. Vespasian. Wesley, the west meadow. Vashti (Esther 1) — Persian, “the best,” the queen whose voice was silenced.

VIIScripture and the close

• Rigveda 10.125 (Vāc). Qur’an 2:255 (the Throne verse), 2:286 (wusʿ), 5:35 (wasīla), 2:143 (the middle nation). John 1:1 — “In the beginning was the Word.” Isaiah 40:3 — “The voice of one crying in the wilderness”: the voice in the waste, V-S in both halves of the verse.
• Close: the voice in the wilderness — vōx in vastus — is one root twice, the sound and the emptiness it fills. Which came first? The vessel; and the voice is the vessel, emptied.
• Next time: Wassap — the same root with the lips barely touching.

VIIISources