What’s important?

I was hiking on my week off, on the Eagle Creek trail in the Columbia River Gorge, and I started thinking about the word important, and how it is quite different in Hebrew and English.

English important comes from import and from porter. It is a word of weight and heaviness, of value.

[ad. L. importāre to carry or bring in, f. im- + portāre to carry.]

Important: f. importāre in its med.L. sense ‘to be of consequence, weight, or force’.

⊕I tried English equivalents for חשוב (chashuv), and struggled. Reckoned about. Considered: this object is considered. This idea is well considered.חשוב (chashuv), the Hebrew for important, comes from thought. Not even that it is interesting to think about, but just that it was thought about.

חָשׁוּב adj. PBH considered, esteemed, important, significant. [Pass. part. of חָשַׁב.]

A half-formed thought

⊕This touches on linguistic relativity, often called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis: whether the language we speak influences how we think.I’ve been wondering whether this has a deeper cultural significance: whether what is considered important is directed by what important means.

The English: a thing’s economic value defines its importance. The Hebrew: the brain calories spent on the thing define its value.