What Certain Words Mean

Quite often, a word known today to mean one thing, meant something different or something broader or more restricted than in the past. As an example:
• Clue: Originally meant a “ball of yard.” Today, it is something that “helps us solve things.”
• Fantastic. Originally meant “conceived or appeared conceived.” Today it means extremely good or wonderful.”
• Furniture. Originally meant “equipment, supplies or provisions,” in the literal or figurative sense as in: “Great increase and furniture of knowledge.” Today, of course, it means equipment such as tables and chairs, etc.
• Girl. Originally meant a “child or young person of either sex.” Today it means “a female child, or young woman. In familiar language, any young unmarried woman.”
• Hussy. Originally meant “housewife.” Today it means a “disreputable woman.”

The different meaning of the word “meat” over the years

• Meat. Originally meant all “solid food” (as opposed to drink) or “fodder for animals.” In 1775 A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, author Samuel Johnson noted, “Our guides told us, that the horses could not travel all day without rest or meat.” Today, the word has narrowed to refer only to the “flesh of mammals.”
• Myriad. Originally meant the number 600. Today it means “a lot.”
• Naughty. Originally meant “someone who had nothing,” and was used like “they were poor and had nothing, thus they were naughty.” Later it changed in meaning to “a most vile, flagitious man, a sorry and naughty individual.” Finally, today, it is used to describe a mischievous, disobedient, and badly behaved child.
• Nice. Originally meant “ignorant,” then became: “showy and ostentatious, elegant and refined.” Later became “cowardly, unmanly, and effeminate,” then “slothful, lazy, and sluggish.” Today it means “agreeable and pleasant.”
• Pretty. Originally meant “crafty, skillful, and cunning.” Later it became “clever, proficient and able.” Today it means “good-looking, especially in a delicate or diminutive way.”
• Silly. Originally meant, “worthy or blessed, then became “weak and vulnerable.” Today it means “those who are foolish.”
• Sly. Originally meant “sneaky and deceitful,” then later became “skillful, clever, knowing and wise.” Today, it means “having or showing a cunning and deceitful nature.”
    Thus, it is obvious that to understand ancient passages, even as late as Joseph Smith’s time, knowing what a word meant at any particular time and not just today, would be important.

A typical road in the back country today

Take the word “road.” Today, this means “a thoroughfare, a long, narrow way of smoothed or paved surface, made for traveling between two or more points; a street or highway.” Other names for roads today include parkways, avenues, freeways, tollways, interstates, highways, or primary, secondary, and tertiary local roads.
    Consequently, when reading that the ancient Romans or Nephite had roads, it is only natural for us today to think in terms of the roads we know, made with asphalt, macadam or cement. Yet, anciently, it merely meant an open way or public passage; ground appropriated for travel, forming a communication between one city, town or place and another. Note that there is no mention of size in this description. Thus, a road in Nephite times might well have been more like a wide path today, though built much sturdier with stone and crushed rock.

A Nephite road stretching for miles through a town in central Peru to another nearby. In the days of the Inca, it was called Qhapac Ñan, which in Quechua means "The Great Road”

In Nephite times, the disciple Nephi indicates a very extensive roadway system throughout the land when he said, “And there were many highways cast up, and many roads made, which led from city to city, and from land to land, and from place to place” (3 Nephi 6:8). In addition, we find that as with the Roman roads, these Nephite roads had been leveled in their construction (3 Nephi 8:13).
    It is only natural, then, that the Land of Promise would show some indication of these Nephite roads as we find indications of the old Roman roads in the Old World.

A country highway running from place to place

While today we separate roads and highways according to size, the Nephites separated them according to destination. Those roads that went from city to city seem to have been classified by the disciple Nephi as “roads,” while those that went from place to place were “highways” (3 Nephi 6:8).
    Roman roads, like those of Peru, were built, where possible, in a straight line from one sighting point to the next, regardless of obstacles, and was carried over marshes, lakes, ravines, and mountains. Peruvian roads were likewise remarkable, with a 25-foot wide roadway that traversed the loftiest ranges. It included galleries cut into solid rock and retaining walls built up for hundreds of feet to support the roadway. Ravines and chasms were filled with solid masonry, suspension bridges with wool or fiber cables crossed the wider mountain streams, and stone surfacing was used in difficult areas. The steeper gradients were surmounted by steps cut in the rocks.

Top: A stepped Roman road from Elah valley to Bethlehem; Bottom: a stepped Nephite road northeast of Lima 

While critics of South America have pointed to the stepped roads in Andean Peru not truly being roads as defined in the Book of Mormon, they neglect the existence of stepped roads in ancient Rome, which were also called roads. Thus, roads anciently did not need to be only smooth and level, but were stepped at times because of topographical conditions.
    Thus, Roman roads, like those in Andean Peru were sometimes stepped, which the critics ignore. It is also of interest to know that Roman roads were found throughout Israel, still seen and used today.
    The first roads were paths made by animals and later adapted by humans, and date back far into BC times. The first indications of constructed roads date from about 4000 BC and consist of stone-paved streets a Ur of the Chaldees in in what is today Iraq. The demand for paved roads rose with the use of wheeled vehicles, which were well established by 2000 BC.
    Lest we fall into the trap of thinking Roman roads were the earliest and only roads in the Old World, the earliest long-distance road was a 1,500-mile route between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea. It came into some use about 3000 BC, but it was operated in an organized way from about 1200 BC by the Assyrians.

Stone road built earlier than 2000 BC, leading to the ancient pyramid of Sakkara in the desert of Egypt, an area called Memphis anciently and today Cairo

Herodotus also states that the Egyptians built their first roads to provide a solid track so they could haul the immense limestone blocks used in the pyramids. Such archaeological evidence indicates that this road building took place southwest of Cairo between 2600 and 2200 BC, long before the Egyptians had the wheel. On the other hand, street surfacing in towns seems to have been limited to paved processional roads leading to the temples. These ancient travel routes of Egypt ran from Thebes and Coptos on the central Nile east to the Red Sea and from Memphis Cairo) across the land bridge to Asia Minor.
    At the same time, the built special special roads for religious purposes and transport about 800 BC. These were mostly ceremonial, or “sacred,” roads, paved with shaped stone and containing wheel ruts about 55 inches apart. In Babylon around 615 BC, the Chaldeans connected the city’s temples to the royal palaces with the Processional Way, a major road in which burned bricks and carefully shaped stones were laid in bituminous mortar.
    The Persian route was duplicated between 550 and 486 BC by the great Persian kings Cyrus II and Darius I in their famous Royal Road. Like its predecessor, the Persian Royal Road began at Susa, wound northwestward to Arbela, and then proceeded westward through Nineveh to Harran, a major road junction and caravan center. The main road then continued to twin termini at Smyrna and Ephesus. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing about 475 BC, put the time for the journey from Susa to Ephesus at 93 days, although royal riders traversed the route in 20 days.

Top: Typical Roman road; Bottom: Typical ancient Peruvian road. Note the similarity as both were called “roads”

Typically, Roman roads were built by placing large stones in the bottom of the road bed, then broken stones, pebbles cement and sand to make a firm base. On top of that was placed cement mixed with broken tiles, then with paving stones forming the surface of the road.
    In Andean Peru, the construction consisted of flat cut stone, fitted tightly together over a highly compacted base. In addition, these roads ran from Quito, Ecuador, through Cuzco and as far south as Santiago, Chile. It included two parallel roadways, one along the coast about 2,250 miles in length, the other following the Andes about 3,400 miles in length with a number of cross connections.
    At its zenith, when the Spaniards arrived early in the 16th century, a network of some 14,000 miles of road served an area of about 750,000 square miles in which lived nearly 10 million people. The network was praised by 16th-century explorers as superior to that in contemporary Europe.
    All of this should suggest to anyone that for a civilization to have developed such excellent roads, it would have had to have been advanced overall, with stone buildings, roads to all parts of the land, and the extensive use of stone for lasting needs. In fact, all of these major civilization centers that built such magnificent and lasting roads also built their public and private buildings out of stone and their remnants are easily seen today.
Consequently, when the disciple Nephi wrote about roads and highways, it seems quite evident the concept of paved roads were well known to the Nephites through Lehi, Nephi, Same and Zoram.