spiritual

A word about breath ended up naming the invisible parts of human life. Latin spiritus began as something you could feel on your skin — a puff of air, a breath, the wind in a doorway — and only later did it drift toward soul and divine life. That’s why it has such lively relatives: inspire, expire, conspire, all of them little breathing stories in disguise. By the 12th century Old French had spirituel, and by c. 1300 English had spiritual, ready for church talk, angel talk, and anything that seemed to float above the merely physical. The funny twist is that a word born from exhalation became the label for what people imagine to be beyond the body — as if language took one long breath and never quite let it out.