Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Story of a Different Color

Not to be confused with an off color story! In a dream I had last night there was a three story building that in reality doesn't exist,when I woke up I was wondering about the word story (maybe a residual left from yesterday's blog?) My best guess was that when families lived in the same house with several generations the word story would mean where a generation or "story" lived in that building. As usual I was all wet.
Roman buildings had decorations of carvings or murals on exterior walls on each floor level,the Latin word for these was historia. The historia depicted myths or battles and multilevel buildings had different levels of historia. Over time the word historia was shortened to story. According to dictionaries this is how the word story evolved from its Latin root.
Another guess at the origin of the term story is that churches that had stained glass windows and each window told part of a bible story. As the churches grew the story continued with more stained glass on the second story of the church.

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