Playing with fire

Long, long time ago some very common things (like water or fire) were described by pairs of words. One word in the pair was active, animate, and personified; the other, impersonal, inanimate was used to refer to water/fire as a substance. Our word fire goes back to the inanimate member of the pair. Same is true of water.

And I think that’s a shame. I wish we still had the pair; I think of fire as a living force, as a spirit, so I wish the second root hadn’t disappeared…