[Noisebridge-discuss] Partisan definition

[Seth David Schoen]

d p fenn writes:

> i don't think that partisan has changed that much. it means someone
> who has an interest in a side. it makes more sense when you see the
> definition in french: Celui qui est attaché à la fortune d’un
> parti. eg, your freedom fighters are the same as today's tea partiers
> since they are taking a stance in the 'us versus them' sort of way.

Yeah, Latin "pars" already has both the sense of 'part, portion' and
of 'side', the latter including the legal sense of a party to a court
case, as in the legal maxim "audiatur et altera pars" 'the other side
must be heard [too]' (as well as modern legal jargon like "ex parte"
and "inter partes").  Being "partial" means belonging to one side or
the other, unlike being "impartial".

The sense of a portion or fraction as a political faction also occurs
in modern German "Fraktion" 'parliamentary political group, party,
coalition'.  ("Faction" < Latin "factio" 'acting, action' hence 'a
group that acts together' and "fraction" < Latin "fractio" 'breaking'
hence 'the result of breaking' are etymologically unrelated, but the
Romans also already used factio to refer to a political party and the
Federal Papers essays criticizing political partisanship called it
"faction".)

-- 
Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org> | Qué empresa fácil no pensar en
     http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/   | un tigre, reflexioné.
     http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/     |            -- Borges, El Zahir