# From astonishment to approval

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH04.P014](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH04.P014/#char=137,198): "It is admiration in English and not only admiration in Latin."

The Latin contrast separates being astonished by existence from being glad of it. Lewis and Short’s *A Latin Dictionary* (1879), inspected in the Scaife ATLAS transcription, gives *admiratio* the sense ‘Wonder, surprise, astonishment’ as well as admiration. Chesterton supplies his own English gloss immediately: his wonder contains praise. That addition matters because the preceding paragraph’s bewildered amnesiac need not approve of the world he cannot explain. Here Chesterton marks a further step: life remains inexplicable, yet he welcomes the opportunity to be alive. The contrast is deliberately sharper than the dictionary distinction: Latin *admiratio* can itself include admiration, so the sentence should not be read as claiming that Latin cannot express appreciative wonder. It isolates two possible responses and says his includes both. [Lewis and Short, *admiratio*](https://atlas.perseus.tufts.edu/dictionaries/entry/urn:cite2:scaife-viewer:dictionary-entries.atlas_v1:lat.ls.perseus-eng2-n887/).

## Sources

- [Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary (1879), Scaife ATLAS transcription](https://atlas.perseus.tufts.edu/dictionaries/entry/urn:cite2:scaife-viewer:dictionary-entries.atlas_v1:lat.ls.perseus-eng2-n887/), Entry admiratio; opening definition and later sense ‘Wonder, surprise, astonishment’
- [G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908), Project Gutenberg #130](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/130), Chapter IV, paragraphs beginning ‘This elementary wonder’ and ‘But though’

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