Andy's Wordshop

The word "parable" produced an interesting discussion recently. The Slovak translation is "podobenstvo", typically a little story told by Jesus to help ordinary people understand his ideas. For me this was another example of how knowing Slovak helps me to understand the basic idea behind English words. "Podoba" means "form", so a parable presents a moral principle in the form of an everyday anecdote. "Podobne" means "similarly", or "comparably", so a parable works on two levels which are similar when you compare them. A parable is an extended metaphor then, with "prenesený význam", and this gave me the clue to understanding the word "parabola", a geometrical curve produced by vertically cutting through a cone, or the typical trajectory of a ball "prehodená" (thrown over) a high wall.