Our exploration of words continues with “betrayal.” Etymologically, tradire means “to hand over,” “to entrust,” or “to transmit.” Over time, however, it has come to signify its opposite, acquiring a negative connotation. For example, one might say that a translator has betrayed an author’s thought, or an interviewer has betrayed the ideas of the interviewee—essentially, they have misrepresented or distorted them. Yet, equally legitimately, one can say that an action has betrayed the hidden thoughts of the person who performed it—that is, it has revealed them, telling us the truth. Betrayal can thus give us the false as well as the authentic, showing us not only etymologically but also semantically the full range of its ambiguity.
