contemplate

The English verb 'contemplate' carries within it an origin so specific and vivid that it reads like ‌​‍​‍​‍​‍​‍​‌​‍​‍​‍​‌​‍​‌​‍​‌​‌​‍​‌​‍​‍​‌​‍​‌​‌​‍​‍​‍​‌​‌​‌​‍​‌a scene from a Roman ritual: a priest standing in a marked-out space, gazing upward at the sky, watching for birds whose flight patterns would reveal the will of the gods. The modern meaning — to think deeply — is the secular descendant of this ancient religious practice.

The word enters English in the 1590s from Latin 'contemplātus,' past participle of 'contemplārī,' meaning 'to gaze attentively at,' 'to observe carefully,' or 'to consider.' The verb is a compound of 'con-' (an intensifying prefix, here meaning 'thoroughly' or 'with full attention') and 'templum.'

The key to understanding 'contemplate' lies in understanding what 'templum' originally meant. In its earliest Latin sense, a 'templum' was not a building at all. It was a defined space — either a section of sky or a piece of ground — that had been formally marked out by an augur (a Roman priest specializing in divination) for the purpose of taking auspices. The augur would trace out a rectangular area with a special staff called a 'lituus,' and this demarcated space became the templum within which all observations were made. Birds flying through this space were read as divine messages.

The word 'templum' is generally traced to PIE *temp- (to stretch, to extend), the idea being that the templum was a space 'stretched out' or 'marked off' for a special purpose. The same root appears in 'temporal' (relating to time — time being something extended or stretched), 'tempo,' and possibly 'template' (though the latter's etymology is disputed).

To 'contemplārī' was thus originally to gaze into the templum — to perform the act of ritual observation that constituted Roman augury. The augur contemplated the sky not as a meditative exercise but as a professional practice: the Senate could not convene, armies could not march, and magistrates could not take office without favorable auspices obtained through contemplation of the templum.

As the practice of augury declined and Christianity displaced Roman religion, 'contemplārī' lost its ritual specificity and broadened into a general term for sustained, attentive looking and thinking. The Church Fathers adopted the word enthusiastically for the practice of contemplative prayer — sustained, wordless attention to the divine. The 'contemplative life' (vita contemplativa), which Thomas Aquinas contrasted with the 'active life' (vita activa), became a central concept in Western Christian monasticism.

In English, 'contemplate' settled into its modern range of meanings by the seventeenth century. The primary sense is deep, sustained thought — contemplating a problem, contemplating the meaning of life. A secondary sense is 'to consider as a possibility' — contemplating a move, contemplating retirement. A third, somewhat literary sense preserves the original Latin visual element — contemplating a sunset, contemplating a painting.

The noun 'contemplation' and the adjective 'contemplative' arrived in English before the verb, both from Old French. Monastic orders devoted to prayer rather than teaching or missionary work were called 'contemplative orders' — the Carthusians, the Carmelites, the Trappists. This religious usage maintains the closest link to the word's origins: monks gazing inward in contemplative prayer are performing an act structurally identical to Roman augurs gazing into the templum, seeking divine meaning through sustained attention.

The journey from augury to meditation to philosophy to everyday speech demonstrates how a word can preserve the structure of a vanished practice while completely transforming its content. No one who says 'I'm contemplating dinner options' is consciously watching bird flights, yet the etymological DNA of Roman ritual observation survives in every casual use of the word.