Redeem appears in a couple of contexts: (1) saving souls and (2) savings bonds (and other similar coupons and fiscal tokens). In the first instance, your saviour redeems you – pays for your sins, preempting your punishment at the final reckoning and getting you an exemption from the dumpster of doom. In the second case, you redeem your savings bond or coupon – or is it that your bank (or chosen emporium) redeems it? Anyway, you bring it in and hand it over and get your money for it. The obligation is discharged. Either way, it’s redemption! And you come out ahead.
So the question is, if that’s re-deeming, what is deeming?
Well, what do you deem deeming to be? That’s up to your judgement, in a way. If you deem something worthy, are you making it worthy or just estimating that it already is worthy? What kind of reckoning is it?
In fact, we use deem to mean judge in both senses, ‘appraise’ and ‘pass sentence’ – and both senses date all the way back to Old English.
OK, but then, if deeming is judging, why is redeeming re-deeming? Is it a second estimation? A revaluing? Is it from a sense of deem meaning ‘ascertain value’? And also, does that mean that any act of deeming is demption?
If I were you, I would think twice before buying any of that, but, you know, caveat emptor – “buyer beware.”
Oh, do you see that emptor? That’s the word that means ‘buyer’; it comes from Latin emo ‘I buy’, and not because shopping is an emotional experience (emotion is not related – it’s from e- ‘out’, a variant of ex-, plus the same root as motion, and the original sense was to do with stirring or disturbing). This emo – em-o, the root is em- – appears in emporium, and the empt version (which is unrelated to empty) shows up in English words such as exempt (from Latin roots meaning ‘buy out’ – because ex- is ‘out’), preempt (backformed from preemption, ‘buying first’ – i.e., before someone else can), and redemption.
Yes indeedy! But then if emption is buying, what is red-? Does redemption mean ‘buying with something red (e.g., blood)’?
You know it doesn’t. Redemption means ‘buy back’ – because re- is ‘back’ (it doesn’t always mean ‘again’). The d shows up just because re- is red- before vowels (like e- vs. ex-).
So, yes, when your eternal soul is redeemed, it is because your debts incurred by your misdeeds have been paid – bought back. And when you redeem a bond, it’s… well, originally it’s that the bank is the one redeeming, technically: they’re buying it back. But since the transaction is redemption, the sense acquired a reversal of direction.
And where does that leave our verb deem? Out of the question altogether. It’s from an old Germanic root for ‘judge, decide, believe’ – originally applied to literal judgement done by literal judges, who were there to sentence – to deem – but not to redeem. They were the deemsters! Or, with shortening of the vowel and an added p thanks to voicing pre-assimilation, the dempsters.
Yes, that’s right, it’s the dempster who dooms you to the dumpster of death. And yes, doom is from the same root as deem and dempster – the heavy eyes ee of the judge who may deem are swapped for the popped eyes oo of the person facing doom… unless they are redeemed. Which may be possible, but is not etymological.
Sesquiotica 