Forensic Medicine

The thirty-fourth entry is la balistique, and the noun opens a family an English reader uses all day without hearing what is inside it. The Greek verb is ballein, to throw, and the siege engine built on it, the ballista, threw stones at walls. Everything else in the family throws something you cannot pick up. A « problem » is problēma, a thing thrown down in front of you so that you have to deal with it before going on. A « symbol » is symbolon, two halves of a broken token thrown together to prove that their owners belong together. An « emblem » is thrown in, inlaid; « hyperbole » is thrown beyond; « metabolism » is a throwing about inside the body; and the « devil » is diabolos, the one who throws an accusation across, which is why its oldest sense is slanderer. Even « parable » is thrown alongside, and it walked through Latin into parler, so « parole » and « palaver » are that same throw worn down. On this page alone the word still means something physically thrown, and that is what lets it decide a case.