Three words in three distinct languages tell the story of an age-old rite: German Segen 'blessing' (borrowed from Latin signum 'mark; sign'), Hebrew ברכה [braxá] 'idem' (from בֶּרֶך [bērex] 'knee') and the very English blessing. To this day, a knight kneels on his knee to receive a monarch's blessing, a word going back to Old English blœdsung, revealing not only the 'bloody' nature of the universal rite (before Christian-era ευλογία and its Latin calque benedictio 'praise' gained territory), but also the Germanic origin of French blesser 'to wound'.
