I first encountered the word "text" -- as did everyone else of my cohort -- as the first component of "textbook." At P S 217, textbooks were issued on the first day of school. Then, later in the day, we ritually scissored brown paper grocery bags and improvised protective book covers. It was not unusual for the covers to be in better shape than the retirement-eligible books. At college, I was surprised to find that I was required to purchase my own textbooks -- a discovery that busted a hole in my precarious budget.
And then the word "text" sat still for a number of years until it emerged as a term of art in critical theory. "Text" became a generic word for anything written: novels, poems, plays, signs, advertising slogans, tattoos -- anything that could be analyzed and discussed. I think, in retrospect, that the idea was not to "privilege" one form of writing over another. "Text" is to poem as "provider" is to doctor.
Nowadays, "text" has emerged from the gloom of academic criticism and has become the most frequently used of words. Who could have predicted it? I myself, formerly a writer of letters and postcards and until recently of emails, and for many years at one point a user of the telephone, now send and receive multiple "texts" in a day.
The noun has also acquired a variety of verb forms: "I'll text you"; "I texted you"; "Text me when you arrive"; "Talk to you later. I'm texting."
All derived, ultimately, from L. texere textus, to weave; or textor, a weaver.
The use of "text" in religious ceremony, as in a cleric's, "today's text is..." has never been a part of my life.
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