The other day, my husband looked up from his Bible reading and went, “Well this is interesting. The word used to describe the Israelites crossing the Jordan on dry ground is transgress. The same word used for sinning.”
I believe my response was something like “Huh.” Immediately followed by “Well, that makes sense.”
Transgress, which joined the English language in the 1400s as “to sin,” came to us via French from the Latin transgredi, which is literally (trans-) “across, beyond” + (gradi) “to walk, go.” So the literal use, the group crossing the river, is logical…yet rarely used in English, because we’ve instead embraced the metaphorical sense, to “pass beyond a limit” or “overpass a rule or law.”
In other words, “you’ve crossed a line” or “gone too far.”
Fascinating, isn’t it?
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 
