Crypt, and an "Aha" Moment

I find all the embedded links fascinating – that’s why they’re there – but understand that not everyone will.  I will notify you when the one you absolutely have to follow to get the point comes up, near the end.

I had a sudden curiosity about the word encryption and how it might be related to “crypt.”  I could see the connection with cryptic and crypto-, and the idea of disguised or hidden.  That didn’t seem far from the idea of a crypt, but it wasn’t precisely on point either.  Crypt is indeed a bit of a detour,  being a short form of Greek krypte kamara, with a similar word in Latin and in Middle English. “Hidden room” is the literal – kamara like camera , as in Camera Obscura – used for vault or chamber, then grotto or cavern, and much later, a burial place beneath a church.

Along the way one notices other curiosities. There are related words from Old Church Slavonic (kryti “to hide”) and Lithuanian (krauti “to pile up”).  There was an “aha” in that latter one, which I will come back to.  Even though those languages might seem to us to be related because they are Eastern European, they are not that close and are even less close to Greek and Latin.  They had been separated three thousand years and more. “To pile up”…now, that’s odd…

It is thought to be related to calypto- meaning hidden or covered, which in turn is related to a very old root – and this is the one link you need to check out - kel-     

kel(1) meaning cover, save, conceal, part of helmet, ceiling, cell and a flock of other English words. Including “hell” the place of the dead. 

kel(2) meaning "to be prominent," or “a hill” which goes into our words for excellent, culmination, and hill.

Identical primitive roots usually have common origins*, yet the connection between the two forms of kel- might not be immediately apparent.  Unless one has been reading about kurgans  for forty years, especially the last two months.  Kurgans were hills that were built as burial mounds for prominent people – by exactly the ancient tribe which is the ancestor to those languages using kel-, calypto- crypt- , above. Greek, Latin, the Slavic, Baltic, and Germanic languages have a common ancestor.  They built kurgans to honor their prominent dead, beginning just before they moved in many directions to become dominant from Iceland to India.  To hide/ cover/ conceal/ bury, related to "to make prominent"/ pile up/ hill.  No obvious connection until, as Paul Harvey used to say, you know the rest of the story.

*Keyword: usually