You know the meaning, but do you know the origin of words we use daily in relation to our yoga practice? Languages have the fantastic gift of developing daily, welcoming new words, and coining new terms. However, many words have been with us for years and centuries, and we can see their traces across worldwide languages. Let’s look at the words used in English when talking about yoga.
Practise
- the spelling of ‘practice’ as a verb outside the US
Practise can be traced to the early 14th century, when the word practisen originated, meaning “to follow or employ” a course of action. In Medieval Latin, the word for “to do, perform” was practicare and Late Latin knew practicus. The word practisen started to mean “to carry on a profession” – especially in relation to medicine. It also acquired the meaning we know nowadays “to do or perform habitually and/or repeatedly with the intention to obtain and learn a skill.”
Yoga
- *yeug – Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to join, to tie together.”
In the beginning, there was a root *yeug – many languages derived their own words from that root.
- Sanskrit: युज् (yúj)
- Sanskrit: युग्म (yugma)
- Sanskrit: yogaḥ = meaning “union.”
- Ancient Greek: ζεῦγμα (zeûgma) = meaning “bond.”
- Latin: iungere = meaning “to join.”
While each of the derivations has a slightly different meaning in modern languages, they all seem to have a very similar sense, which steers us in one direction – that of unity, bond, and union.
Yoga stands for the unity of our soul, body, and mind; it represents the bond we have (or should have) with nature, flora, and fauna.
Soul
“Soul, the substantial entity, which is present in each person, who thinks, feels, lives and wills.”
Etymologists argue that the root word for “soul” comes from Proto-Germanic *saiwaz, which is of unknown origin and was described as “any great mass or large quantity” at the start of the 13th century. Another word of unknown origin related to the above is *saiwalō, which was used when talking about life or living being; there are three theories on its etymology:
- from *saiwiz = “sea, ocean” -> + -alō. This theory considers the pagan Germanic belief of the existence of sacred lakes inhabited by the dead and unborn.
- from Proto-Indo-European *sóh₂i-wl̥ ~ *sh₂i-wéns, which seems to be related to Proto-Balto-Slavic *séiˀlāˀ = “strength, soul”; Latin saevus = “fierce”; or Latin saeculum = “generation, lifetime”. The circle closes when we get to homonyms *seh₂y-, which mean “to bind” or “rage/fury,” and leads us back to *saiwiz.
- from *s(w)ai (=”self”), which was derived from Proto-Indo-European *swoy-, + *walō (=”choice, will”).
- Old Saxon -> seola
- Old Norse -> sala
- Old Frisien -> sele
- Middle Dutch -> siele
- Dutch -> ziel
- Old High German -> seula
- German -> seele
- Gothic -> saiwala
In old English, they used the word sawol to describe the “spiritual and emotional part of a person.”

Sources:
https://www.etymonline.com/
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/soul
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/saevus#Latin
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