Why Doesn’t “Retire” Mean “to Tire Again”?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, this is Karen Gallivan from Santa Barbara.

Well, hello, Karen. Welcome.

Hi, Karen. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

One day, my husband and I were driving along, and of course, it got me thinking about different words, and I love how you guys dig through everything. And there was a word I’ve always been curious about.

The word I wanted to know about is it’s retire and retirement, because I think of, you know, people retiring after 30 years. They’ve been in that dedicated, hardworking, five-day-a-week job. And I think they’re going to have time to relax and go on indulging hobbies and travel and just slow down a little bit. But the word retire to me sort of says to tire all over again when I think they should be relaxing. So I’m curious about that.

Yeah, you know, when my dad retired, he said, I’m not retiring, I’m retreading for the journey ahead, which I really like.

There you go.

Another 100,000 miles.

Yeah, exactly.

I was talking to my husband, and we had another thought this morning. You know, usually at retirement age, you’ve raised your children, but grandchildren come along, and they retire you over again.

Oh, that’s good.

Yeah.

And then you send them home, right?

That’s the good part.

Well, I don’t have any yet, but when the day comes.

Fingers crossed.

Yeah.

All right.

So here’s the thing. English is a tricky lady. She’s got aces up her sleeves, and English is weird. And one of the things that she does is she likes to throw words at us that look exactly alike, but they’re etymologically completely unrelated. And so the T-I-R-E in retire has nothing whatsoever etymologically to do with the tire as in to be tired or to need to sleep. And also etymologically has nothing to do with the tire as in the tire on the car. So it’s three identical looking parts of words that are unrelated.

So that explains a lot of it right there, right? So when you talk about retiring, we got it from French, ultimately from Latin. And it basically means to take back or to withdraw. And if you think, for example, about old-fashioned meal experiences, maybe you saw Downton Abbey. And what happens after the meal? They withdraw to another room. They retire to that room, right? Or maybe at the end of the night, they retire to their bedroom. So they are withdrawing from company and removing themselves from the regular situation to do something else. And so when you are retiring from a career or an industry or a job, you are withdrawing yourself from that environment.

Makes sense that way.

There’s a lot of other languages use a form of that word, too. And in Spanish and Portuguese, the word for, I believe the word for withdraw or withdrawal is retiro, something like that, R-E-T-I-R-O.

Oh, yeah.

My husband, he’s fairly fluent in Spanish, and he said there’s the word terrar, to throw. And he thought the same thing. You’re going to, like, throw a new spin on life and, like, do it over again, kind of.

Yeah, throw or draw. We’ve dissected it as well. And did he talk about the Spanish word jubilación?

No, but I think you would feel that with retirement.

Right, right.

Jubilation, right?

Jubilation, yes.

Yeah, that’s the word for retirement.

Yes, that’s wonderful.

Well, I appreciate it.

That’s great, you guys. I appreciate the breakdown.

Well, we appreciate your calling. Karen, thank you so much. Enjoy. Take care.

Thanks, Karen.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you’ve got a different word for what it means to leave the working world and go to the volunteer world or the charity world or the grandkid world, let us know, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.