The adjective gadarene means headlong or precipitate, as in a gadarene rush to pass questionable legislation. It comes from a New Testament story about Jesus in the land of the Gadarenes, where demons are cast out of a possessed man and enter a herd of pigs that rush into the sea and drown. The same story also gives us the phrase my name is Legion, often echoed in horror, science fiction, and comic books. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Gadarene” Describes a Headlong, Reckless Rush”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. I came across a super cool word the other day.
Oh, yeah?
It’s gadarene.
Gadarene. Spell that for me.
G-A-D-A-R-E-N-E. Gadarene.
E-N-E.
Mm—
Is it the name of the molecule that makes polyester pants?
I don’t know. I don’t know what it is.
The “-en” suggests a chemical of some kind to me, or a substance of some kind, but the “-gad”, I’m not finding anything there.
Okay, and the definition probably won’t help because Gadarene describes a headlong rush towards something.
So like you might have a headlong, you might have a Gadarene rush to pass a bill that’s questionable.
Yeah, or you might have a Gadarene rush to get married if you’re really desperate to get married.
The cool thing about Gadarene is that it comes from a story in the New Testament that not only gives us that word, Gadarene, but also gives us a phrase that I think you’ll find more familiar.
The story is that Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee to the land of the Gadarenes.
And in the land of the Gadarenes, there was a guy who was possessed by demons, all these evil spirits.
And he lived up in this cave and he yelled all the time and he cut himself with stones.
And when Jesus gets there, he’s asked to get these demons out of the guy.
Right.
And so Jesus does.
But the demons from inside ask to be put in a herd of swine, a herd of pigs.
And so Jesus gets the evil spirits out of this guy, puts these spirits into the swine, and then the swine go nuts and go running off a cliff into the sea and drown.
So that’s the Gadarene rush.
Yes, yes.
In the 19th century, you start to see references to Gadarene swine, you know, people that are rushing into something like the Gadarene swine.
And then Gadarene became an adjective describing that kind of headlong rush.
But the other cool thing is that the Gadarene swine was going to be a good one.
About this story is that when Jesus addresses the evil spirits inside the guy, Jesus says,
What’s your name? And the guy replies, my name is Legion. Oh, there we go. How about that? Because
There’s so many evil spirits inside of him. That’s the click. Yeah. Because that’s used so many times
In scary movies and science fiction and tons of places. Yeah. I think there’s a science fiction
Book that’s titled My Name is Legion.
It pops up in comic books all the time.
Yeah. I was so surprised because I don’t
Remember hearing that story in Sunday school
And I came across this word Gadarene and I
Thought, what’s that? And I started drilling down and then
I saw My Name is Legion. That’s
Outstanding. Oh, I love this. You know what
We should do? A radio show about language
Where we find those distant roots to things
We all know so we can be surprised all the time.
Let’s do that. You have all the best ideas,
Grant. You know, and the phone number of that
Show might be
Maybe the show would have an email address.
It’d be words@waywordradio.org.
