Sarah Palin article on Huffington Post gilded with a bit of Latin etymology

Saturday, October 11, 2008

The Huffington Post has the following in an article on Sarah Palin and her body language:

In our work we call body language the Five Flags, because there are five major ways human beings react when they're not speaking the authentic truth. Twitches and jaw-clenches are examples of Flag #1, Body-Flags. To understand Sarah Palin, though, you need to understand Flags #2 and #3, Voice-Flags and Attitude-Flags. The English word 'personality' comes from two Latin words, per and sona, "through sound." The Romans knew that the personality comes through in the tone of voice and other vocal aspects.

From thirty-five years of clinical experience, we can tell you a lot about Sarah Palin's real personality and why it makes many people even more nervous that John McCain's.


I can't find anything to back this up from etymonline.com, though Wiktionary gives the following about persona:
From Latin persona (mask; character), sometimes said to derive from personare (to sound through).
but then it later gives the following as the etymology instead:
From Etruscan phersu, from Ancient Greek πρόσωπον (prosopon).

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