Beginning at the Beginning

I tend to write introductions well after I've written most of the body of a text. So with that in mind, I've decided to let etymology do the talking instead.

The word "begin," according to the lovely and talented Online Etymology Dictionary, comes from the Old English word beginnan (sometimes onginnan, for some reason or other, except that it's apparently a stronger verb than the former), which itself derives from the root bi-, "be," and the West Germanic ginnan, which might mean "to open" or "open up." This possible definition links it to an Old High Germanic word in-ginnan, which means both "to cut open, open up" and "begin, undertake." Scintillating start to this blog, right there.

So given the fairly mundane etymology of "begin" (there are seriously better ones out there, and they will be presented randomly and with little actual relevance to anything, really, other than pure entertainment value), I'll give T.S. Eliot, from 1941's "Little Gidding," the last word:

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph.