September 1953
By: L. L. | Superior, WI
PROBABLY the one basic essential, necessary for getting sober and staying sober through the AA program, is sincerity. The word is used so much in the practice of the program that it might be interesting to indulge in a little research into its origin. As I understand it, at one time the Romans sold marble building stone to the Gauls. Even then they must have had sharp business practices, because occasionally the Gauls would discover that the Romans had concealed blemishes and defects in the stone by filling them with wax. Then the heat of the sun would melt the wax, thus revealing those defects, sometimes after the stone was already in the wall. In order to protect themselves against this practice the Gauls had a clause inserted into the contract, to the effect that the stone was to be delivered without wax. In the Latin language of the contract, “without” was written as sine; “wax” as cere.
Therefore the marble was to be delivered sine-cere. Without wax. In time the two words were combined into one, meaning, in the present day English (according to Funk & Wagnalls dictionary) “1. Being in reality as in appearance. 2. Intending precisely what one says or what one appears to intend; honest in one’s action or profession.”
This wax, as it applies to the personality of an alcoholic, is deceptive stuff. The Sixth Step says, “we became entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” Right now is when we find out how sincere we really are. How much “wax” we’ve been using. Wax ought to be easy to remove, but the stuff as it applies to an alcoholic is as sticky as flypaper. Even when we are rid of it, it seems to grow back by itself, even as insincerity creeps back.
The founders of AA must have recognized this danger because they offered a “wax solvent” in the form of the Third and Eleventh Steps,–a very effective solvent that should be applied daily. . .particularly the phrase “sought through prayer and meditation to increase our conscious contact with God,” a vital ingredient in that solvent which will permit us to live a life free from alcohol. A sincere life. Without wax!
And… the buzzkill section:
The folk etymology of the English term “sincere” deriving from “without wax”—sans cire in France, is actually very old and common. During the centuries, etymologists have suggested different fields in which wax was used and to which the term may have been applied, like the one about honey sellers from Ancient Rome who were supposed to shout sine cera to convince buyers that it was pure honey with no wax added.
But as noted here:
These origins have long been challenged by Latin scholars, who say that “sincere” comes from a medieval Latin word, “sincerus,” meaning clean, unadulterated, pure of composition. But – dah! Couldn’t “sincerus” have come from “sine” and “cera”? We shall never know until we get that book I’ve always wanted to see published – the dictionary that gives us the root of the word-root, and for several generations of origin where necessary. (Frank Delaney)
The Grammarphobia has the story:
- This is another of those linguistic legends that make etymologists’ hair stand on end. The word “sincere” has no such origin, but the myth, in one form or another, has been causing bad-hair days for hundreds of years.
The more likely etymology:
- “Sincere,” first recorded in English in the 1530s, is from the Latin word sincerus, meaning “clean, pure, sound, etc.,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
- The first syllable of the Latin sincerus does not mean “without.” As the OED says, it may be equivalent to the first syllable in simplus, in which sim means “one.”
The “without wax” usage from sculptures:
- But that old “without wax” myth has lived on—and on and on. We’ve found versions of it dating back to the early 1600s. One of the more recent incarnations comes from Dan Brown’s thriller Digital Fortress (2008):
- “During the Renaissance, Spanish sculptors who made mistakes while carving expensive marble often patched their flaws with cera—‘wax.’ A statue that had no flaws and required no patching was hailed as a ‘sculpture sin cera’ or a ‘sculpture without wax.’ The phrase eventually came to mean anything honest or true. The English word ‘sincere’ evolved from the Spanish sin cera—‘without wax.’
- Though all the stories claim in the end that “sincere” comes from “without wax,” the details vary widely. Sometimes the people trying to disguise flaws in stone were ancient Greek quarrymen, sometimes Roman sculptors, construction workers, or architects.
The “without wax” usage from pottery:
- In at least one version, the flawed goods were pieces of pottery that wouldn’t hold water unless they were secretly repaired with wax. In another, we’re told that a biblical injunction (“Be thou sincere!”) literally means “Be without wax.”
The “without wax” usage from furniture:
- Yet another version, from the early 1900s, claims that “in the days when they began to make furniture,” dishonest cabinet makers used wax to hide the knots and cracks in inferior wood.
The “without wax” usage from writing:
- A gullible writer in 1870 passed this one along: “In old times, people used to write notes to each other, and tie a string around them, and seal the ends of the string with wax. When friends were intimate, and open-hearted toward each other, they folded the letter, and, leaving off the string and wax simply wrote the word ‘sincere.’ ” Hence, he wrote, the Latin for “without wax” became the English word “sincere.”
…and from honey sellers:
- But the oldest versions of the myth claim that vendors of honey in the markets of ancient Rome cried “sine cera” to assure buyers that their honey was pure and free from wax.
Etymological origin from past references:
- Here, for example, is the explanation offered by John Gill in A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity:, Vol. 3 (1796): “The Latin word sincerus, from whence our English word sincere, is composed of sine & cera; and signifies without wax; as pure honey, which is not mixed with any wax.”
- And here’s a definition of “sincere” from a religious dictionary published in 1661: “Sincere is that which is without mixture, as hony without wax.”
- Believe it or not, there are still other versions, but you get the idea. As the OED says, “There is no probability in the old explanation [from] sine cera ‘without wax”.
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