Talent

Did you realize that our English word “talent” comes from that parable in the Bible??? I just now realized this!

Actually, I think I hypothesized it a while ago, but never got around to confirming my hunch by looking up what the Greek was:

καὶ ᾧ μὲν ἔδωκεν πέντε τάλαντα, ᾧ δὲ δύο, ᾧ δὲ ἕν, ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὴν ἰδίαν δύναμιν, καὶ ἀπεδήμησεν…
(Matthew 25:15)

In case you don’t know the Greek alphabet, that bold word would be “talanta” if transliterated into English letters. And that sentence uses the accusative plural form of the word; the lexical form is of course τάλαντον.

As if this was not enough evidence, I looked it up in Liddell & Scott’s Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, which told me that the word referred simply to a certain large amount of money, as is obvious in the parable:

  1. a balance, Theogn., Ar.:—in pl. a pair of scales, Il., etc.
  2. anything weighed,
    1. a definite weight, a talent, in Hom. of gold; but the weight of the Homeric talent is unknown.
    2. in later times the τάλαντον was both a weight and a sum of money represented by that weight of silver:—the Attic talent weighed about 57.75 lbs. avoird., and its value in our money was about 200 l. There was, of course, no such coin as a talent. For purposes of coinage, a talent of silver was coined into 6000 drachmae.

For added confirmation, I consulted the Online Etymology Dictionary, which reports that the English word came from the Old French word talent, which came from the Medieval Latin word talentum (“inclination, leaning, will, desire”), which of course came from the Greek word τάλαντον.

So it was apparently in Medieval Latin that the shift took place:

…Meaning "special natural ability, aptitude," developed mid-14c., from the parable of the talents in Matt. xxv:14-30.
(http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=talent)

Just as I suspected!

Thus “talent”, as we use it, must have originally stemmed from a metaphorical interpretation of the money in the parable. It probably signified an ability given specifically by God as a gift, which should be used and developed wisely until the master returns…or something to that effect.

How convenient! I tend to use the word this very way, already!