So I have a new job, working at KOCE-TV. My primary responsibility is basically to mediate the conditions of the contracts that sponsors sign in order for our station to run (yay public television) with the actual airing programming on the station. Yesterday I learned about the importance of an affidavit, and so I was wondering what exactly that word meant or where it came from. To me, it sounds like a gigantic acronym, which should make things interesting.
According to Wikipedia, an affidavit is "a sworn statement of law" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affidavit). This is a medieval Latin term. Once again, we return to the principle that Latin was the language of the educated. In this exact translation, it means "he has sworn an oath", again reference the wikipedia page.
I guess that really isn't as exciting as I thought it would be, but it makes a sort of sense. A legal contract would be called an affidavit because it is binding truth that both parties will stand by their agreement, and there will be penalties if they do not do so. Knowing the meaning of this word adds weight and pressure to the importance of my tasks... so I had better not mess up
Read later for more workplace hijinks... (which is actually a good word... to blog on that later?)
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