Lester in Dallas wonders why colleagues spell holistic as wholistic when they mean looking at a project as a whole. The standard spelling is holistic; the wholistic variant reflects folk etymology, a reshaping based on the tempting but misleading connection with whole. Holistic ultimately goes back to a Greek element meaning “all,” while whole has Germanic roots related to hale and health. Using holistic for the entirety of a situation is legitimate, not limited to alternative health care. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Holistic, Not Wholistic, Is the Standard Spelling”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Lester in Dallas.
Hiya, Lester. Welcome.
Thank you. I’m calling because you all are the only people I can think of that might be able to help me.
What’s your problem?
There’s a lot of things that I hear every day that irk me, and then some of those things are typically in the office.
And one of them that sticks out a lot is holistic.
Now, I think of it the way it should be, with an H.
But what I’ve noticed a lot of people doing as of late is putting a W in front of it and pronouncing it the same way.
They would say, okay, let’s look at this project holistically.
So their meaning, let’s look at the entirety of the project, all the things involved with it, as opposed to, which I would likely bring up in meetings, the natural or what are the elements, the natural elements of which I apply to this because that’s what holistic means to me.
And I’ve looked it up.
I don’t know if I’m using something out of date, but I don’t see that as being an actual word.
With the W or with the H?
With the W.
-huh, -huh.
And you’re talking about not necessarily in terms of health care.
Right, exactly.
They would only look at it in the sense of looking at the entirety of something.
Right.
And so I don’t know if that’s an actual word that’s now come into existence, but I guess my big question is, what is it called when that occurs?
When a word that, like, say, holistic with the H exists, means something, but then yet someone who wants to coin it a different way and then spell it a different way, like, say, with the W, and then make it a new word with an implied definition.
Because it’s weird because then people in meetings and stuff like that will hear someone else or higher up say it, and then they adopt it.
They’re like, oh, well, Mary just said it, so Mary must know what she’s talking about, and let’s use this word.
And then it just grows.
So I see it in emails, I see it in notes, I see that people talk about it.
You see it with the W spelling, right?
Yes.
So you’ve got two problems here, it sounds like.
One is the word holistic, H-O-L-I-S-T-I-C, is now being spelled by some people in your office with a W at the beginning, as if it came from the word W-H-O-L-E, right?
Correct.
And they’re also now using holistic to mean all of something or all of somebody or the entirety of the situation, instead of the way you use it, which is a very specific meaning related to the, was it the psychological or metaphysical treatment of a person?
Am I understanding that correctly?
Right.
Right. And you’ve got a bunch of questions here, and I’m going to try to knock them off one by one.
The first thing is, what’s really interesting is, the only spelling of holistic that you should be using is without the W.
It should not be spelled with a W.
And I realize that’s a really obvious pun, and some people might use that spelling just because they think it’s goofy or funny or it kind of gets their point across about the meaning that they want, which is all of something or all of somebody.
Or their higher-ups used it.
Or their higher-ups used it. But really, it’s the H spelling without the W, okay?
The second thing is, and this is going to blow people’s minds, is that holistic does not come from the same etymological root as the word whole, or W-H-O-L-E.
It does not.
Holistic actually comes ultimately from a Greek prefix meaning all of something.
And whole, W-H-O-L-E, comes from deep Germanic roots a zillion years ago that actually has something to do with being hale or hearty.
It has to do about the actual substance of our behavior, I mean, sorry, the health of a person.
And it’s going to blow people’s minds because the meanings are so similar and the spellings are so alike that people are convinced that they must be related.
And there is a term for that, which is to answer another one of your questions.
It’s called the folk etymology.
This is when people look at the evidence in front of them without understanding the true depth of the history of a word.
And they just draw a conclusion based on superficial appearance like spelling or meaning.
And what we’ve got here is another of these great things that makes the English language so bizarre.
And one of the reasons why you can actually have a national show about language to explain this stuff.
They’re not related.
To get to your third question, I think the final question, if I’m remembering, the meaning of holistic.
So you might talk about holistic therapy in which you were going to address all the issues that a person might have.
Their physical being, their mental being, their stress level, their family life, their work environment.
We might talk about that as holistic, right?
That’s one of the meanings you’re hearing.
That is a later meaning of holistic, but it is a legitimate one.
It does exist. It’s very widespread.
It’s used throughout the United States in the English-speaking world, but it is the slightly newer meaning than the original holistic.
Yeah, and that was my thing.
That’s what I know of it to be, this whole new, not to apply a pun there, but the whole new application of it is what’s confusing me because people so readily accept it.
And so that’s what I was trying to figure out.
What is that called?
And it’s a folk etymology.
Yeah.
Sometimes it’s just simply called a misinterpretation, and that’s actually what they use in the linguistic text.
This is a classic example of a misinterpretation.
Don’t spell holistic with a W.
The meaning of holistic to mean all of something is fine.
And holistic and whole, W-H-O-L-E, are not etymologically related.
Yeah, the HOL there is.
Yeah, it’s the same HOL in hologram and Holocaust as well.
Right.
Yeah, the whole thing.
Well, Lester, I’m glad that we were able to help you.
Thank you so much.
I hope it works out for you in the office, okay?
Oh, yeah.
Thank you very much for taking my call.
Take care.
Rock on.
All righty.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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