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.