I realised a few years ago that I’d been singing a hymn wrong. The first line is All glory, laud and honour to Thee, Redeemer King.’ I presumed it was a typo in the hymn book and was singing ‘All glory Lord, and honour.’ (I didn’t seem to have a problem with the terrible grammar of that sentence.)
When we changed to projecting hymn words on a screen, the word ‘laud’ was still there. I knew that they would not have carried a typo over from the book. So I went looking for the definition…
Oxforddictionaries.com says this: Laud – Late Middle English: the noun from Old French laude, the verb from Latin laudare, both from Latin laus, laud – ‘praise’
There’s nothing new I can say about praise. Even if you don’t believe in God, you know what praise is – whether it be for a sports team, a musician or your child’s maths homework 🙂 BUT when rummaging around to see how the word ‘laud’ is used, I found some troponyms of the word.
Stay with me now…
A troponym is a way of enacting a verb. It’s different from an adverb – she sang brightly, he walked slowly etc. It is a method by which an action can be carried out. So a troponym of ‘laud’ is simply, a way in which one can ‘laud’ You still with me? 😉 Well one of the troponyms is -to ‘ensky’ which means – to exalt to the skies; lift to the skies or to heaven with praise.
Presuming I haven’t totally confused you, I hope you think that is a fantastic as I do!
In the updated version of the hymn book, they’ve changed the word to ‘praise’. I know that a lot of flowery and unfamiliar language is not always helpful, especially to folks who are new to it all. I just think laud is a better and a fuller word. I’ve been blessed in the exploration what it really means.
Whatever word we use, the important thing is that it all goes to Him.
Just another Christian woman... 
Hi Amo, just dropped by as I saw a thingy on Lee’s blog mentioning your blog. I’m a born-again Buddhist (all of us Buddhists can say that) And a writer. Your post on laud is wonderful. I mourn the passing of old rich words. I argued on CBC against the removal of the crayon colour Burnt Sienna from crayola’s panoply of colours because of that. How lovely that a wee kid in the Canadian prairies should see those words in their box of eight and later realize she’d been introduced to a place and material used by artists in the renaissance! But I babble. Just to say I enjoy your writing and will be back.
Again, I’ve learned something new. I had long known that laud meant praise, but never heard of troponyms or heard the term “ensky” … and now I must agree that laud is a much full word by definition than praise. By the way, I love that particular hymn and regret that so many churches in America have moved away from singing traditional hymns.
I like the word laud! Thanks for sharing more about it, makes it even more meaningful.
Blessings~
And this is why I so enjoy the KJV. The words are fuller of meaning, in that someone else hasn’t translated them “down” for me. I am free to let all the different nuances and possibilities of difficult scripture to play out, and have God translate it for me.
Donna Smith
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